The Pursuit of Happiness
by her name is erika
Summary: "Are you happy, Travis?" / Or, Travis Crawford's journey to find the complex answer to that simple question. [Travis-centric, slight AU]


**The Pursuit of Happiness  
Summary: **"Are you happy, Travis?" / Or, Travis Crawford's journey to find the complex answer to that simple question.  
 **Disclaimer:** I own nothing that is recognized. I only own the plotline and the characters that help push it along.

* * *

 **I.**

" _There is a moment when you realize you are not doing what you want to do or being who you want to be. It is at that moment that you become who you really are."_

— _Chloe Thurlow_

* * *

When Travis is a kid, he decides to swing off the swing set and jump off at the highest point.

Why?

Because everyone else is doing it and the concept of defying gravity and thinking maybe people _can_ fly – even for a few seconds – is the coolest ever. Then reality rattles him at just nine years old when he soars and while landing, hears the sound of something breaking and cracking. At first, he thinks, oh it's a stick or a twig snapping under his shoe or glass shattering.

Travis realizes that nope, it's not a broken stick or glass. It's his arm.

It hurts really, really bad. Recess stops as the world blurs in front of him to the point to where he can't grasp the concept of teachers, the principal, the office visit, and the distant frantic call to reach his mom at work. He doesn't know what that is, exactly. Travis knows his mother can _find people_ and that's pretty cool. He doesn't ask much when he's busy with science homework.

Travis isn't crying because of the pain. He's crying because school isn't school to him anymore. It's just adults moving really fast and then really slow. There's red and blue in his vision, the deep reassuring voice of the paramedic and he doesn't want that. Yeah, his arm hurts and no, he isn't Spiderman and Travis has the foresight to know he's in a lot of trouble. But when the paramedics tell him he'll be fine, he's not scared anymore.

—

He's the son of a father he doesn't know and a mother who hates the British nobility she's born into, rebelling against it. He's the grandson of a man who is as English as they come yet a guy doesn't take life all too seriously. Of course, he's the current Earl of Bath, but his grandfather isn't about the pomp and circumstance. _I'll sing God Save the Queen and even shed a tear under the Union Jack flapping majestically in the wind, which is all fine, but I really want a pint._

His grandmother is a woman who fights a post-1917 Russian world to survive. She's the polar opposite of him, a woman toughened by experience that has made her really wise. Travis loves her, adores her really, but more than anything, values anything she says. She's soft spoken but she never pulls any punches with anyone.

Travis finds it liberating to be with the most because he never leaves any conversation feeling confused although she has a tendency to speak in proverbs and riddles. Besides, that's that awesome perk of not having to speak any English for the entire time he's with her.

"Ah, I adjusted to England," she says in Russian, with a shrug. He visits England a few years after landing on Wall Street. This is honestly his favourite part of the visit each times he arrives at Heathrow. Conversations with his grandmother. It makes Travis wonder how someone like her gives birth to somebody like his mother. "Married an English Earl who wouldn't stop proposing to me in French at a dance until I said yes in English. Had three daughters, your mother, Svetlana, and Nadia. Lived a good, fulfilling life. But," she continues with a smile and a twinkle in her green eyes that allows Travis to see the simple, carefree girl behind the regal looking woman in front of him, "I am simply Irina Alexandrova from Moscow at heart."

She pours clear vodka into two shot glasses, clinks hers against his and he watches her throw it back in slight wonder.

Naturally, Grandmother, he thinks downing his too. Of course.

"Are you happy, Travis?"

"Yeah," he nods and answers, politely and as honestly as he can. "I'm happy."

His grandmother studies him for a brief moment, and then takes his hand and gently turns it so she's looking at his palm. She becomes reserved again, becomes Countess Crawford of Bath. Her rings glitter when the sunlight in the grand living room catches it.

She traces the longest line in it with a finger. "You have my father's hands. That is good. It means that you have his working spirit. You are my firstborn grandchild. I am very proud of you, no matter where life will take you."

He doesn't feel like crying very often and nothing really shakes him, but this is one of the few things something rattles him. That is high praise coming from her. She questions if he's happy, even fulfilled in the long silence after the question. He knows that. Travis looks her in the eye, and answers honestly but something in his gut twists. It almost hurts.

His grandmother holds his hand with one of her rare warm grins.

"When you bleed for the right reasons, you don't feel the pain."

"And if you bleed for the wrong ones?" Travis ventures to ask because the ache in his gut won't go away. He's got a distant noise in his head that sounds like a chainsaw and the next ten deals taking shape there. Sometimes, when there is caffeine in his veins in the early hours of the morning, it would be nice for some quiet.

"Then there's just blood and pain all for naught."

She pats his hand, switching to perfect yet accented English so distinctively her.

"Moscow is _my_ home. If you find where _your_ home lies, you've found everything."

An expensive apartment in Manhattan he's never really in most of the time is his home. There's the rush of trading, the intensity of the work and the allure of the money. When he showers and putting on a suit and tie, Travis knows his hard work leads up to this. He may stab another person in the back, because well, Wall Street is not a place for the faint of heart. Wall Street turns into a person predator or prey.

His bed is pristine and made perfectly. Travis doesn't sleep two nights at a time.

No rest for the wicked, Travis remembers from AP English.

Well, there's no rest for the scrappy kid from Washington State either.

So, yeah, Travis is happy. He fights to have this life that affords him anything he can possibly ever dream of and really, isn't that what every person wants? To be able to work their way up to a goal and say they've arrived?

—

If Travis is honest – which is what his grandmother is getting at, when she stops looking at him and starts looking through him – he can't figure out where home is. Home isn't just a place with walls and a roof. He knows that. Home isn't a place on a map. It's peace of mind and it's integrity.

—

The day he leaves Wall Street – actually leaves New York – he doesn't do it with a bang or a whimper. But he does realize that making decisions on his own terms is a powerful thing and he'll never lose that again. He wakes up and sees the sky is the colour of ash. Yellow taxis weave themselves between familiar streets that are now strange.

Travis feels like the kid who jumps off a swing set and snaps his arm in two places again.

Only this time, he hits a gleaming tall skyscraper headfirst and he's split himself into several pieces. But when he is in the process of himself together again, Travis breaks out of the autopilot mode he's been in. He waits for the chainsaw sounding noise to rattle in his head and there's only radio silence. _Another piece of himself fixed_.

Travis sees his black leather day planner, filled to the brim with meticulously planned appointments, meetings with whatever partner, and this quest for the next oil trading deal. It's become a strange language to him now. He can't decipher it, and frankly, doesn't want to.

He hears the faraway rumble of thunder so grabs an umbrella by his door because that's just the practical thing to do. There's something he has to do first – something he always wants to do but is held back because of this suffocating Wall Street pressure cooker.

Travis laughs as he tears the pages out, chunks at a time and disrupts the neatness of his king sized bed. He throws the pages like confetti and they land on his blanket, on the plush carpet he's hired a maid to vacuum, his pillows, on the couches, on his desktop also organized neatly. Travis turns his clean apartment into a wonderful mess and it's the most liberated he's been in years.

He pulls on his coat with one more thing to do in mind. He's made his mind up. He won't change it. It feels like waking up from a slumber that feels like masked death and he can breathe. Travis honestly feel alive and he's mad that he let himself forget that – everything is brighter to him, has an awareness that make him see things and people for what they are and an appreciation for the kind of hard work that won't leave him feeling hollow.

Leaving his apartment and allowing the door lock behind him, Travis' new awareness alerts him to three things:

a) his pressed suit feels like a straitjacket

b) his tie feels like a noose and,

c) he'll keep his nice car and downsize to something just as good and reliable later.

So, this is what contentment feels like, Travis thinks and can't help but smile.

And if it rains, then it rains. He's a Seattle kid.

—

"Fire me or I'll quit, Walt."

Walter Harrison blinks at Travis, and then chuckles, "Oh, damn," he breathes a sigh, and shakes his head with residual laughter. "You got me for there for a minute, Crawford, because I thought I heard you ask me to fire you before I announce your promotion."

Travis doesn't react, doesn't have excitement or even pride at being promoted.

He looks at his boss in the eye and says again, seriously.

"I did. I'm asking that you fire me, or I simply quit."

Walt's face gets grim and his voice is controlled, with anger edging it. He rests the palms of his surface on his dark mahogany desk – one that has the framed photo of his wife for all the world to see and another of his mistress hidden in an inside drawer. Walt narrows his brown eyes, fixing Travis with a glare, "Travis, what the _fuck_ are you doing? You pin down the Ashbury deal that will have me throwing digs at Dale Stephenson for _years_! I'm about to promote you and you want to quit? Are you insane?"

Travis pauses, taking in the décor of an office he's been in so many times: the high view that has a view of the Statue of Liberty standing tall, surrounded by the Hudson, the wide grassy expanse of Central Park, the busyness of Times Square during the day and how it illuminates at night with billboards and corporations that say, Pick me, buy from me, give me your money. _Give me your soul_. For a moment, he looks past Walt, past the window and wonders what's beyond here.

Walt's voice snaps Travis out of his reverie. "Listen, if you need time off, it's yours."

"I don't want time off…"

"A week?" Walt suggests, and then corrects with a dismissive hand. "No, a month!"

Travis resists the temptation to roll his eyes and groan. Exasperation settles.

"Hell, take two!"

"I don't—"

"Is it the work? Have you had any actual sex lately?" Walt questions, and he's dead serious. Now, Travis thinks, yep the man has lost it and is out of touch with life. It's not a surprise because Walt hates any kind of sudden change though. Changing his perfect little hierarchy would make him do this to him. "Because look, I know a couple of girls. Worth the money. It'll help you relax. Do not make me beg. It's damaging to my system."

Travis glares, "I think you know me well enough to not insult me like that. Don't."

"You never had a problem with it before."

"No! Listen!" Travis argues back, yelling and corrects. "I never had a problem with commodity trading and having sex – not that it's any of your business anyway – on my own terms! Even then, I fell in line and did what was asked of me. I _killed_ myself getting that Ashbury deal for you. I can't do this loyal soldier shit anymore!"

He thinks of his grandmother, his mother, his aunts, his female cousins.

Travis then asks a question not only directed at Walt but this damn industry, as a whole.

"Are you serious? You want to keep me in a place I don't want to be in anymore so your solution is to pay for a couple escorts and I'll be fine!" Travis continues, unable to stop this waterfall of anger that gushes out of him and he doesn't want it to. "So, in turn, I have to ask – what is wrong with _you_?"

It's one of those times where Travis' nerves are stretched, raw and nearly frayed. He can't do this anymore. He can't be here anymore. Travis is just a cog in a machine that swallows people and spits them out. He's one small cog, but he will not perpetrate that kind of existence anymore.

Travis glances at down at the shoes he will most likely donate to charity. He sighs, trying to understand Walt's perspective. He sees the hurt flash across the other man's face and he's sorry for that. Travis isn't trying to hurt anymore – just trying to figure out who he is and who he could be. He can't do that in the confines of an office, to the soundtrack of ringing cell phones and looking into the eyes of people who have nothing but dollar signs behind them.

"Walt, please," he says, calmly now, although remnants of anger still reside. "If I think really hard about this and come to the conclusion I don't have the taste for this anymore, then I can't be here. That's what it comes down to for me. You're a smart guy. C'mon…"

"You make it sound so simple…"

Travis sticks his hands in his jacket pockets and shrugs with a half smile on his lips, "Because it is."

In a world where everything made complex to reach a means to an end, it's really simple for him. Travis just wants to get from point A to Point B (maybe a Point C, because plans in life never, _ever_ goes as they should).

If he falls and crashes, the battle scars are his own. Then he'll get up again.

"Give the promotion to Marshall," Travis suggests, with a knowing glance. Walt's eyebrows furrow and he's confused and then he isn't and sighs. Of course, why Marshall? But really, why not? Marshall (note: Anthony Marshall; dark hair, olive skin, hazel eyes and a personality as close to getting a rusty nail through the foot), even as irritating as he is, does work hard.

Walt shakes his head, resigned and looks at Travis with eyes that are honest this time. "Damnit… Crawford, you're really grabbing me by the balls here," he pauses, eyeing him and finally, Travis feels like Walt understands. The older man asks, laughs as if everyone – even him – is in the twilight zone, "Oh my God. Am I even sober right now? You picked today to have a bleeding heart and get a damn conscience? Is the sky blue? Do unicorns now exist? What is going on?"

"You kinda owe him."

Walt frowns, the lines in his face emphasized. Travis watches, as Walt lets himself sink into his desk chair and grouses, "Oh, I owe that bitch nothing,"

"You're sleeping with his wife."

Walt's head snaps up, eyes wild, "Who told you she was pregnant? I swear, the kid isn't mine."

This, right here, is exactly why Travis wants to leave. _This_.

Travis sighs, speaks matter-of-factly, "Look, I've enjoyed it. But I woke up today and my whole perception of things has changed. I'm just going to figure things out but I won't do it like this," he smiles, glancing down before looking at Walt again. "I respect you a lot and I'm honoured you took a chance on me but..."

Walt runs a hand over his face. "Yeah, yeah, I know," he agrees and shrugs. "I guess, you're amicably fired."

"See? Now, was that so hard?"

Walt glares at him, and runs a hand over his eyes. His shoulder heave.

"Lose one of the best people I have ever had," he grumbles, and admits with a rare honesty. "I lied, Travis. The kid _is_ mine. That's why I needed this. I needed a distraction. Promote you so I don't look at Marshall's tragically constructed face as much."

Travis shrugs. Walt creates this storm all by himself and he'll have to weather it the same way, but he can't help but feel sympathetic. "Sorry I couldn't be your distraction."

"Yeah," Walt leans back into his chair, gaze averted. "Me too, Crawford. Me too."

—

In ten minutes, Travis is effective immediately fired from his job, gets a severance payout of a quarter of a million. By Walt's logic: it's just math – five years of loyalty, and true hard work that earns his lifelong respect multiplied by the usual fifty thousand severance. Walt smiles at him and affectionately tells him to get outta there and go start whatever life he's after. _He means that._

Travis is gone before the first bells of the New York Stock Exchange start ringing.

* * *

 **II.**

" _How shall a man escape his ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father's or mother's life?"_

— _Ralph Waldo Emerson_

* * *

After he leaves his job, he drives around and finds a bar. A student fervently types on a laptop while drinking coffee. A woman in a black dress with a combat boots on her feet plays a cello, lost in the music she creates. Her eyes are downcast, her plum dyed hair falls like a curtain over the side of her face.

A couple heatedly fights – the girl pulling her hands away with tears in her eyes and the man's stone faced with a set jaw. Travis sips at his beer and thinks either an engagement gone south or by the way the woman slips a slender hand down to her abdomen, an unplanned pregnancy. Cello Girl's hands move deftly up and down the instrument to make more music as another couple – or not – flirtatiously plays pool. It's not his business. It's just fun to observe. Interesting.

It's small on the inside yet large on the inside, bustling with life that is different. People from all walks of life probably congregate her because of their problems, passions or just to pass the time. The walls have framed pictures of philosophers long and revolutionaries who fight to change _their_ world and quotes that speak to the human condition amidst a lively game of darts.

Travis doesn't know whether it's the universe throwing him a sign, or a series of events that make this possible but he's surprised and quite happy right now.

Happy and confused.

His grandfather is supposed to be in London right now, but here is he sliding into the seat opposite him. Travis remembers his grandfather to be a jovial guy, rarely irritated with the build of a giant. He peels off his coat to reveal a dress shirt and trousers while Travis has long loosened his tie and put his suit jacket in the car.

It's a running joke that while Grandpa Theo (note: really, Earl Crawford of Bath; he's the 7th one) is blond haired – age has greyed it a bit – and blue eyed like him, his mother looks different. Travis has a mother with pale skin, black hair although the green eyes come from his grandmother.

"What are you doing here, Grandfather?"

"Get me a drink and we will talk."

It's not that he doesn't appreciate being dropped in by his grandfather.

It's the fact that he brings everything that he just escapes from – lives planned and put in a box, and English nobility as an establishment that thrives on blood and money.

Travis does love his grandfather and beer so things are looking up.

—

Grandpa Theo has already downed half of his beer.

"My God, this beer is shit. What kind of Guinness is this? Piss water is what it is," his grandfather mutters with furrowed brows and then sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. Travis sees that he's agitated and he knows how prickly his mother can be. He also knows his mom ( _Julia_ or Yulia if Russian technicalities are involved here) can be like a content pet cat to an angry mountain lion in the middle of mauling its victim until bloody.

Travis offers a sympathetic smile, "I'm sure Mom couldn't have that…bad."

"Thank you for lying for the benefit of your grandfather, but you and I both know Julia will always resent me. She loves me as a daughter should love their father but I made terrible, grave mistakes with her…" Travis watches his usually happy grandfather trail off and sag under the heaviness of sadness and he kind of wants to text his mom to understand why. "Being first-born – the new blood of a family's generation – is a burden, Travis. It's something that marks you for life…"

He's supposed to be listening to this wisdom, and on some level, he is. But it feels like Travis is free falling into this rabbit while it's not dark at all but really bright. Sound melts away, his grandfather's timbre becoming more and more distant. Movement stops and he doesn't remember anything he's observed in this bar somewhere on the Upper East Side. If he's still with his grandfather, he most likely is there physically. If Travis is still listening to his grandfather dispense wisdom while listing the reasons why being the firstborn of any family is a scar on the psyche, it's all white noise.

Yet here he is. Travis is free falling into this giant white space, a literal clean slate at his disposal to be or do anything. Even say anything. His mind is racing not because of gravity. He's free. Why does he have to bear anything because he's his mother's firstborn (really, only born)? Why does she? Why does someone's nature dictate their nurture when they don't have to be intertwined until lines blur?

Of course, blood is important and Travis is proud of his name – of whatever parts of his ancestry are there. He's made peace with never knowing his dad although it's an itch begging to be scratched. Sometimes, it's like living with a phantom limb. Travis won't hurt his mother that way when she bears from her own scars from being with the man. When he catches her in moments of drifting and sees her absentmindedly finger that thick silver ring around her neck, he knows by the tears that well up in her eyes, she's left this one wound open and raw.

It's ludicrous that first-born children have to fight to keep the weight of a whole family's hopes, dreams and accomplishment on their shoulders when they want a life of their own. There it is, his mind says and Travis' eyes adjust to the stark white he still finds himself in. He gets up, resting on his elbows and in all four directions it's a wide expanse. Nothing holds him back anymore.

Absolutely nothing and it leaves him feeling warm.

Then the bar comes back. All of it and he finds his grandfather blinking at him, mouth half-open. Travis' mouth must be on autopilot and says what his brain puts together.

"Grandfather, I'm sorry…" he stammers a semblance of an apology. Travis doesn't mean to say those things but as three and a half ago, his mental filter is not there anymore. He can't read the older man's face and yes, he's human and always family so something close to embarrassment lands in his gut. Travis sighs, trying to make sense of the shift in headspace. "Listen, I'm proud of ancestry I have. Yours and Grandmother's. I am proud to have your last name. It's mine too. I get it," he looks into his grandfather's eyes and with conviction says, "I just don't believe that just because you are the firstborn to a family that you are bound to something. You're human before you become someone's kid."

For a few seconds, Travis thinks he may have continued the generational tradition of having a frayed relationship with his grandfather. Travis watches him tap the glass of his beer mug, shift in his seat and clear his throat. Then Grandpa Theo smiles and claps a beefy hand on his shoulder across the table affectionately.

"That is bloody brilliant."

"It…is?"

"Absolutely," a pensive look, an absentminded sip of beer and a face of disgust because in his grandfather's words, the beer is shit. "There is some merit to your argument and there are some aspects I believe. Some, I don't. The point is, you fought and as long as your last name is Crawford and the blood runs through your veins, you fight for what you believe in whatever that may be. We, the fresh sprouts of a tree rooted into the ground for years, just fight a little harder."

Then a realization hits him. "Grandfather, did you want the earldom?"

There's a long pregnant pause. Cello Girl has long stopped playing, and a song that is overplayed but Travis can't quite recall is the background music in the bar.

"No," he admits, shaking his head. "But you see, my dear boy, I grew up differently than you did. My father was a hard man and my mother had died when I was child. I think that embittered more than he already was. Probably, but I was first-born son," he shrugged. "I fought against it. Begged him to pass it to my brother, Albert. He merely laughed and told me if I didn't, I had the blood of every dead Crawford on my hands. It was my _duty_. This family fought to keep this title and he would not let it be headed into extinction because of my wants. Albert wasn't suited for the title because it would 'break him'."

Oh, so his great-grandfather is the emotional blackmail type. Travis thinks of all competitors he's cheated, lied to and blackmailed – although they are little white lies that turn grey with time – and it makes him nauseous for a brief second. To be fair, however, Travis does blackmail his way out of his job and Wall Street for a good reason. Doesn't make it any less scummy though.

"God, I'm sorry you went through that."

"In hindsight, I'm not. I never begged anyone for anything after that day. It made me focused and I was going to find the woman I was going to marry, love and have a life. But by God, they were going to respect me. English nobility were going to _respect_ us. How warm we were, since that never happened and parental warmth was an anomaly," Grandfather explains, with conviction of his own. He softens. "That's why I took the title. To still be within societal confines and break the system from the inside in my own way. I _did_ have three daughters so the universe agrees."

Just when Travis couldn't love this man anymore, his heart made more room for it.

"That is my fight. Being just Theodore, the father, and husband against the Earl of Bath at the same time. Everyday."

Travis thinks of Wall Street, the strewn pages of his day planner still all over his apartment, thinks of Walt and thinks of the quarter million at his disposal to do whatever he wants.

He takes one last sip of his beer when another epiphany hits him.

It's not the fighting. It's the objective of the fight: reaching for sanity.

If Travis is correct, then he will fight and _not_ lose.

Grandpa Theo throws a proud smile at him and on a laugh says, "Finally decided to call out the corporate shithole masquerading as Wall Street, eh?"

Travis nods, laughs too. "Yep. Finally."

"So, where does the wind take you after today?"

"Honestly," Travis answers, with a sharp feeling of dread and adrenaline. That's the real rush there: the kind of rush that could make his heart race so intensely that it may give out and just stop. Yet he doesn't care because he wants to really live before he dies. "I have no idea. That's the beauty of it. I truly don't know."

"Well, wherever you end up or whatever you do, fight and fight hard. Also, because life is mysterious that way, there are some battles that can't be won. You have to accept that too. Live on your terms."

"I plan to, Grandfather."

They clink half empty beer glasses to it.

* * *

 **III.**

" _No matter how far we come, our parents are still in us."_

— _Brad Meltzer_

* * *

A couple months later, New York is a blip in Travis mind. It's a chapter in Travis' life closed in a story that's still being written. Now, there are fresh pages waiting to be written from the perspective of the person he is now.

He returns to Seattle where things are different yet still the same. One of his favourite smells in the world is outside after a hazy downpour. It unwraps memories of jumping in rain puddles, the rain beating down the house on days he's sick and his mother attempts to make chicken noodle soup.

Travis pays for a hotel room for a month at the most but he drives to the house he leaves for college for something bigger and better at that time. Every highway, roadway and the small bodies of water in between like veins headed to the heart is imprinted into his mind. Puget Sound. Evergreen forests he is never afraid of walking through because nature is always new there and on sunrises before school, the mountaintops seem to have their tips glowing.

Seattle, where it claims Jimi Hendrix and leads the grunge movement even though he's too young to understand _Smells Like Teen Spirit_. Kurt Cobain's suicide letter and the events is something that reverberates everywhere but the epicenter is in right here – one of those moments where Travis like everyone, is glued to the television and can't really breathe for a minute.

His mother turns the television off and sends him to get started on that history homework. Travis remembers groaning and can see his mother talking to someone from work. His mom is a private investigator and he finds it really cool, like she's a superhero without the cape. Travis wishes she were home more. As he trudges upstairs, the imagined image of Cobain shooting himself dead in four walls rattles in his brain and he tries not to shudder. _Suicide_. What drives someone to end their lives? His adolescent mind questions that and with that he changes the whole context of his history assignment. Travis writes about historical figures known for taking their lives, with questions way beyond a school paper.

Travis now drives by the elementary school, the high school he graduates a year earlier than his classmates.

Nostalgia hits him like a wave of water when he turns on his childhood street and sees the roof of his house and of course, his mother's car in the driveway.

She teaches him to ride a bike, is the loudest parent at his sports games. Of course, she is. The cheering woman is the only one with the British accent. She protects him and loves him so fiercely he can let his father, or the idea of him, sort of go.

"I think I lived my life to where I'm happy. Tried to do good. But honestly, being your mother is my greatest achievement," she says, on his last birthday when she calls him. It rains in New York and Seattle at the same time. "I'd walk through fire for you, you know." Yeah, Travis knows.

He knows his mother has the capacity to love him, amuse him, terrify him, and even rarely traumatize him. When Travis starts dating, in a true Julia Crawford move, he finds out a nicely wrapped box containing a book of STDs and at least three boxes of condoms sitting on his bed.

At the time it traumatizes him, but it feels like home oddly enough.

—

Julia Crawford is trapped between wanting to asleep, and fighting to stay awake. She has cases to work on, other people's problems to solve or the lies of strangers to expose. She scans case file after case file to avoid staring at the oak box on the kitchen table too long, knowing that's in it. _Not today. Any day, but today_ , Julia prays even though she stops being Catholic years ago.

Still the tapestry of that day weaves instead together again and it all collides together in a mess leaves her frozen as he's on the floor, dark red blood spreading out on the same floor their son plays. The only shiny things in the room are his wedding band and the revolver still in his hand.

Julia numbly stumbles out, runs out screaming for her son until a neighbour she knows opens their door, greets her and she takes Travis – her sweet boy who has no idea of what's at home when she wants to forget – into her arms. She's greeted by a cheeky smile and blue eyes that light up.

"Oh, there's my boy. Mummy's here," she breathes into his hair, kissing it. Travis smells like he just takes a bath and of course, he would have their little boy in overalls with no shirt. _Because this guy's gonna be a revolutionary one day_. Julia is thankful she has her son in her arms because it prevents her from shaking so badly, from fear, from anger, from devastation, and maybe even from widowhood and the uncertainty of what comes next. Julia kisses Travis' head and hitches him on her hip to receive his diaper big from the seventeen year old teenager she lets babysit Travis, just not this time. He starts to fidget a little so she bounces on her feet. It always soothes him, or gives her an opportunity to release this nervous energy coiled up like a snake ready to sink its fangs into every nerve she has.

"Um, your husband left him with me and said you were okay with it, I swear," Martha, with her big brown hair, off the shoulder top, neon pink tights and brown eyes wide as a deer about to be run over, protests.

Julia forces a smile, keeps her voice even with edges of British civility.

"Ah, yes. Of course. He let me know before I ran an errand to get that teething gel."

Martha releases a breath of relief, "Oh, okay," she directs her attention to Travis and smiles at him, tickling the bottom of his foot with a grin. "I'm always happy to hang with this little guy."

Julia hoists the strap of the diaper bag on her shoulder. "Thank you for taking care of him," and then she turns serious, as her keys still remain in the back of her jeans pocket, her car parked outside. She needs the bloody passports. She needs home. "Listen to me. Listen to me carefully. Grab your phone. Call the police. Tell them my husband has shot himself in the apartment. _Now_."

Martha's skin turns ashen and her eyes flit to the apartment two doors down. She raises a shaking hand to her mouth. "Ohmigod. Ohmigod. What the hell? Is he…?"

Julia tries to say the words but they feel like knives being shoved down her throat. She grows annoyed at the tears that well in this girl's eyes. She knows it's compassion. Knows that there's a toddler with no father now. A wife turned widow. But Martha doesn't get to fucking cry now when _she_ hasn't.

"Martha, please," Julia snaps, a little sharply. She apologizes, trying to squeeze the image branded into her brain, possibly for life, out. "Look, I can't process this now. Just…just do what I'm telling you. Travis can't see you cry. Because he'll sense something is wrong. He's already teething. My husband is dead. I don't need a screaming child."

"Okay. Okay," Martha breathes, and runs into the house but the door remains open. Julia hears her sniffles and she concentrates on quieting the fussy child on her now throbbing hip.

"Shhh. I know, sweetheart. You're hungry, yeah?" she strokes his blonde head, as he happily resumes pulling on his soother. "There we go, love," she adds in Russian, gentle and soothing like a lullaby. "You're my good boy."

"…yes, yes…my neighbour shot himself. Yes, you heard correctly. Please get here. He has a wife and kid. All of their stuff is in the apartment. Please hurry. Yeah, of course. Thank you," Julia hears the phone click off, and the sound of Martha hanging up. She turns around and opens the door a little wider. "They're coming. I…don't know what to do. My parents aren't home yet, but you can come inside and wait."

"Thank you," she says, and feels disembodied from the words.

Julia is too exhausted to think about the teething gel.

She can be slightly furious that Raymond has a gun in the damn house.

She returns a sleeping Travis to Martha's arms and steps inside, hating that she's trembling and just may collapse. But the only thing that her from doing so is the fact that Travis is sleeping peacefully and his favourite snack to eat are fruits when cut up. Bananas are his favourite.

—

Julia shakes her head, forcing away from that night into the present. Thankfully, the distant barking of a dog that helps the process along. She's turned Travis' old bedroom into a home office, a sanctuary of sorts to retreat to when the office downtown is thick with the smog of clients and a layer of the relationship she and Det. Matthew Delgado may or may not have.

He's a detective with the Seattle Police department who colours within the lines of the law while her methods, while effective contradict them. They banter and argue, have this weird magnetic attraction that pulls close yet pushes them apart. Her need to be rogue collides with his need to be procedural and it's maddening. She's linear, clean and within heavier rules her whole damn life.

Even with the way she likes the way he calls her and roughens her clean, noble last name and his dark brown eyes twinkle at the way her accent bends around his last name. Julia doesn't want to think about his angular jaw, his eyes, the slight lift of his right eyebrow when he's pensive, his lips, his nose, how strong his hands are. Julia doesn't think to think of his biceps as she makes him take off his shirt to look a bullet graze to the arm and remembers how she rips the belt of her dress to tie it to stop the bleeding until they get to a hospital. Lana would be proud in her own soul-sucking kind of way.

She remembers catching a glance at his abdomen even with the inches long pink scar there – a stab wound he says, from his rookie days. Julia doesn't want to think of Delgado today. She doesn't want to think. Just work. Yet her hands shake as she picks up the tumbler of whiskey and brings it to her lips. She winces at the way it burns her throat going down and closes her eyes to marinate in the warmth the liquor brings her.

When she opens her eyes, Julia narrows them as anger blooms in her chest, sitting on her lungs and squeezing like a boa constrictor. He already comes today. He always comes on _this_ day. She's made peace with it decades later. There is his, sitting in the couch across her desk. He wears what he dies in, gaping hole in his chest where the bullet goes through his heart with ease. His shirt darkens with fresh blood and it makes Julia laugh since her top is the colour of red wine.

Swept shoulder length blonde hair, blue eyes she dives into by just staring at them, an impish smile that just about grabs her the first night they meet and a grin that entraps her into marriage and a child. Travis inherits his sweet, charming temperament and his bluntness but his reactionary anger and his guarded nature come from her side of the gene pool. It's funny. Travis is older and even more than ever, can see his father in his face expect his nose and ears – those are hers. Raymond settles into the chair, one jean covered leg crossed and settled on his opposite knee.

"Go away."

He shrugs, lazily, as if they speak of the weather. "Every year you say that and I still show up," he spots the wedding that sits on a chain around his wife's neck and tilts his head slightly, curiously. "Wonder why, Jules."

Julia takes in a sharp breath, "I'm holding on it for our son."

"Until then, you're going to wear it and relive that day. Torture yourself. Had no idea you were into self-flagellation."

She can feel the anger squeezing, squeezing until her lungs may burst.

"Like you fancied suicide?"

Raymond glances down, until he raises his gaze and says softly, "Your eyes. After all these years, still stun me," he laughs when the matter is intense and laughter isn't appropriate. He becomes contrite. "I'm sorry. I meant to go that day. I didn't mean for you to find me. I didn't want our boy remember me for my messes no matter how minute. I couldn't do that another kid. Not after what I did to her."

There it is. The splintering of his mind that leaves Julia intrigued, fascinated and when it heads into a dark place even marginally frightened. He furrows his brow and there's frustration on his face. Raymond's eclectic that way. He's brilliant at his best – intellectually, as he scribbles poems on scraps of paper that make sense to no one but him at first glance – warm and sweet in the middle of the spectrum and his worst, he manages to be erratic and dark. Anger becomes rage. Sadness becomes despondence and depression. Happiness becomes manic delirium. Numbness becomes frozen detachment.

" _Her?_ Another child? What are you talking about?"

Raymond stands to his full height. Six foot two to her five foot seven. Julia almost sees the storm brewing in the spaces of his mind. She keeps her eyes focused on him, rationalizing this. _This is not happening. This is not real_ , her private investigator's mind says. That theory is as dead as he is.

Yet the whiskey erodes barriers of rationale and sanity. She can hear Svetlana's raspy voice in her head, her sister's cackle, _Julia, it's happened. You're fucking mad. Married a damn nutter who offed himself to get away from you. Daddy's little falcon is a cuckoo bird._

Feeling warmth travel down her arms, his hands stroke her arms. How is this –

"Don't touch me."

A slow smile stretches across his face, "Don't you remember how I touched you the night we made him? When we ran off to nowhere, drank and danced until there was no concept of time. It was just us. Husband and wife. You were so beautiful," he lightly fingers an errant strand of her black hair, as she shivers. Julia is so close to Raymond she can see the blue irises of his eyes, and the light scar above his right eyebrow. She remembers that beautiful night: every kiss, every touch, every hot breath, every stroke and every explosion that leaves the both of them satisfied and whole. Then Julia remembers the right that nearly cracks her to pieces and she cannot breathe. "I remember you. Laughing and smiling. Your eyes sparkling. Your hair dark but shiny as it slipped through and between my fingers…"

"Stop it!" she snaps, breaking away from his touch, holding onto logic and sanity for dear life. She's walking around him to get a wary distance between them even when she wants to go for the door. But Julia isn't known for running from anything and won't start now. Her head will not allow nostalgia and she curses her heart for even allowing it.

Her desk filled with papers, a glass tumbler of residual whiskey and a framed black and white photo of Julia and Travis separate them.

 _Past and present. Here and there._

Julia runs a hand through her black hair – straight today, maybe curly tomorrow because really, it's just fucking hair and all so petty in the grand scheme of things – and tries to steady her breathing with the hope that her heart does the same.

When she opens her eyes and turns around, Raymond is gazing out the window. Julia glowers at him, crossing her arms. Even in profile, she can see the shadow that falls on his face. She knows that shadow. Knows it all too well.

"You said you killed yourself because you didn't want our son to get the chance to remember you for your messes," she questions steadily, keep her tone cool and even as if this is just another case on her desk. "Raymond, you said _her_. What did you mean by that?"

There has to be that one kernel of truth in his mental cesspool of mental instability.

There always has to. Surely, he has to be lucid and coherent.

"She looked like an angel," he says in a ramble, more to himself than her. "Tumbled from the heavens, ascended on a cloud and dropped into hell. She's gonna walk through flames her whole life. My fault. It's _my_ blood…mine…"

Raymond turns to look at her, and it freezes the blood in her veins. His eyes are stormy, the colour of water when it's unsettled with waves powerful enough to rip a grand sea vessel to little pieces.

Julia still keeps her cool, British stiff upper lip on display and her face a mask of indifference as decades after his death. Raymond's madness still swirls around her like a hurricane. She will be calm. She will be calm. She will be –

He shakes his head, laughs and now, has a grin on his face.

"You always did have an amazing poker face, Jules. But your eyes always give you away. The windows to that powerful, strong soul nobody could ever break. You know it though. You've been escaping what your blood means, am I right? Of course, you have," Raymond leans against her desk. With every word, he says, he moves closer, and she takes two steps back. Three forward. Two back. She does this fucking dance until her back hits the door. _Shit_ , Julia curses under her breath. She's in the eye of the hurricane. "He's fifty percent me. Travis knows me. In his heart. In his soul. In his gut. He can't erase me."

"But you can erase yourself? Because you did that, y'know. _You_!"

"Forgot about your rattlesnake tendencies. I've missed that."

" _Fuck you_."

"We did that. Ended up with the kid downstairs."

She tries not to flinch at the sound of Raymond's hand, hitting the wooden door.

He softens, just barely and strokes the curve her jaw down to her throat, "Oh, Julia. For someone so smart, you're really obtuse," he sighs as she sharply slaps his hand away. "I know what I did. It was my struggle and I chose my path – bullet through the heart and all. Tell him about it, but he wants to know me. Even if he can't the way he should. I'm a part of him. He doesn't ask because he can't hurt you. But he'll resent you. Every year that passes and you don't tell him about me, you hurt him and Travis will resent you."

"You're not real. You're not real. You're not fucking real."

Raymond grows angry, grabs her wrist in a tight grip that is both scorching hot and freezing cold. She can't stop the gasp that escapes her throat. Julia's heart feels like it stops, pauses and then slowly starts again.

"Feel that?" Raymond's tone is a dangerous low, as his fingers tighten. "I'm not having a _moment_. I'm not manic or depressive. I'm clear right now. I am as real to you, as your guilt and the cute nose on your pretty face. If you sit on this, I'm going to keep swinging by. I can't rest. And I won't. I can't do anything, but my son is living with just pieces of himself. I want him whole. _Now_."

Julia giggles, and then laughs. Nomad like him? Impossible.

"When have you ever rested?" she questions, roughly retrieving her wrist. She breaks away from Raymond's physical cage. "Move. You never rest."

He's not here. He's dead. Time marching forward proves that. She rubs clammy hands against her dark blue skinny jeans, the plush carpet of her office like electric sparks on the bottoms of Julia's bare feet. Raymond is in the ground, six feet under and she's the one here breathing.

She can still feel the heat of his gaze on her back.

"What can I say? I love travelling – you're my favourite destination."

"I'm not an option! Go!" she slaps a palm against her desk. Her palm tingles and hurts because it's better than dissolving into tears.

"Sober up, Jules."

When she angrily rubs at her face, Julia turns around and she pours herself another drink. A dead man will not tell her what to do.

Julia throws a final drink back and it's going down numb this time.

She may be drunk, but Raymond's gone and she's coordinated enough to manage the stairs. She can hop fences, engage in hand-to-hand combat and is a decent markswoman. So, it's completely rubbish that she'd fall down the stairs because she's a tad inebriated.

Julia's phone sounds like a damn jackhammer.

"Three…missed calls from Delgado," she murmurs, forcing her eyes to focus but it hurts. She sighs, rubbing her face. "I'll call 'im later."

The three knocks on her door sound like explosions so Julia leaves the office, swearing so help her, if Raymond thinks it's fucking funny to haunt her again, she will shoot him. Obviously, the man can't do it properly himself.

Three more knocks.

 _Okay_ , she coaches herself. _Don't slur. Get some bloody equilibrium_.

 _Answer the door and for the love of God, don't burst into tears._

When Julia opens the door and sees Travis, she breaks the last rule.

* * *

 **IV.**

" _I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."_

— _Augusten Burroughs, Magical Thinking_

* * *

Travis isn't expecting any typical homecoming when he rings the doorbell of his childhood home. It's not because Julia can't be a June Cleaver type. It's more because she's a woman who colours outside of the lines. She chases bad guys, scales fences and takes photos to uncover the truth of strangers with money to burn. Sometimes, she goes undercover to play pretend.

But she never really stops being his mom in all the ways that count. She teaches him to defend himself and never, ever look in the mirror and have the realization that the reflection has changes.

Travis hears footsteps – yep, those are the stairs – and then a clicking and the door opens.

His mother's eyes are watery, tears rolling down her cheeks. She sniffles, wiping at her eyes. Travis doesn't know whether to be concerned or laugh. This is the woman who teaches him how to land a right hook to defend himself. Some of it taught, some of it is instinctual but because fight is better than flight.

When he rightfully blackens another kid's eye in self-defense in sixth grade, he's suspended for two weeks. The other kid gets the same.

Mom shows up to school, coffee in hand, and says thank you.

He expects some kind of punishment but she takes him out for a milkshake with extra whipped cream instead.

In his kid mind, it's the coolest thing.

Now, as an adult, Travis wonders why.

—

"Travis?" she croaks out, sobbing. She smiles, places a hand to her heart. "You're home."

"Yeah, I'm home, Mom."

She hugs him, and out of force of habit, Travis rests his head on her shoulder. He's bigger than her and she's up looking up at him now but it's nice.

She pulls away, holds his face and says, "I'm really happy you're home, sweetheart," she says, and releasing it to get back to drying her puffy eyes again. He notices the dark bags under them but can't help but brush another forming tear away with the pad of this thumb. "For a whole host of reasons, I'm a little drunk. Just a _little_ ," she explains with a slight slur, a small space between her thumb and forefinger.

Travis furrows a brow and studies her. His usually poised mother is wobbly on her bare feet and she uses the doorframe to steady for herself.

"Why?"

"It's pretty fucking foolish, yet intense but I…oh shit…"

She pauses, and then Travis watches his mother slap a hand over her mouth, running like it's a track and field event past him. She's a blur of black hair, burgundy and black jeans.

Adding to the list of things his mother does to surprise him, she proceeds to precisely vomit on the neighbours' empty driveway. There's the sound of retching and you know, vomit hitting asphalt.

Travis sighs, and says a mental apology to that family for their driveway.

—

It's not that Julia doesn't appreciate the work that therapists do.

She's just doesn't want it done on her.

The cold shower does her good to push her back into sobriety. Travis is making them coffee, she remembers as a soft smile touches her lips. She still hears the sound of his little running feet with her chasing him as he pulls off his diaper and says, _No_! He proceeds to laugh while peeing on the floor because he's won this round: he is free to roam the house free while Mummy cleans the floor.

Julia's hair is still damp from the shower, leaning towards being dry. She's managed to fish a pair of denim shorts out of a sea of laundry she has to still do. She is about to thank the heavens for a strapless blue top and tugs it on when a small chill runs over her skin like finger strokes. She can still feel fingers tighten around her wrist, branding the hidden facets of the truth.

She sighs, deeply. "Don't you have chains to go rattle?"

Raymond snorts, as she turns around. He's wearing clean jeans, a white shirt and Julia has the innate urge to run her fingers through that head of hair. It's madness. She knows that logically, but it's been a tough day.

"Nah," he waves a dismissive hand. "Not my style of haunting. I'm visiting."

"You and the semantics. I've read enough damn Dickens. You're haunting me."

He's not angry. He's not overtly happy. He's just calm, peaceful – the man she married. Julia stares at that scar above his eyebrow and reaches out to trace a finger along it but Raymond smiles, catching her hand. Pressing a light kiss to the inside of her palm, he shrugs and lets go.

Julia notices it. The sparkle of mischief and adventure in his eyes – the colour of a cloudless sky. It's when one looks up and wonders where the clouds are, and yet can be satisfied because the sky is so huge, so expansive and so blue. Sky stretches on for miles and you don't bother to wonder where the clouds are once.

"Yes, and no," he answers, looking at the silver chain with the ring. He glances down, "I guess… I am partly because I hurt you and I have to make sure, you're okay. Like, _really_ okay. Not just that guarded shit you pull because you were raised to do that. I mean, it's not your fault but…" he trails off, and finally looks at her with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.

Julia feels a lump in her throat, and her jaw start to tremble but she has to be calm for herself and quiet for Travis. She's already been drunk in front of him. She doesn't want to show him that she's lost her mind.

"I…have to go. And so do you. I _mean_ it," Julia implores. "Step into a bright light or pester St. Peter at the heavenly gates but you have to go, Raymond," she adds quietly, wringing her fingers while averting his gaze. "Travis is your son. When he tells me sometimes he feels like he's not alone or someone's watching him, I will always listen because I'm his mother. I'll know why. But I can't see you like this, or cry when something reminds me of you. Or, resent you because you made a choice," her breath hitches, sharp in her chest underneath her sternum. "Please. If you love me…If you ever loved me or our son, please go."

Raymond is quiet, pondering, thinking, ruminating. "Okay," he nods. "Deal. I'll leave you alone and not check on you _as much_ , if you stop wearing my wedding ring around your neck. Stop it," he says, eyes boring into hers. "I'm gone. Shit happened. Live your life and let me go," he smiles again, and this time it's a grin. "But thanks."

Julia playfully rolls her eyes, "What for?"

"Loving our kid hard enough for the both of us."

"Wasn't hard," she smiles, proudly. "Travis is an amazing person. But I'm biased."

Julia glances down at the silver chain with the thick silver wedding ring on it.

She ventures to ask again, this time carefully and gently. Julia's not asking as a private investigator but as someone who still figuring out his intricacies. He's a human Rubix cube and her hands still twist. Just when one side matches, the others are totally wrong.

Raymond is a man with many sides but none of them line up. But he's wonderfully flawed with all of his cracks.

"You..." she starts, softly and he raises an eyebrow. Julia clears her throat, tugs at her hair and exhales. "You said something about another child. A girl. _Her_. Do you have another child?" she asks, thinking of her child downstairs although he's a man now. Where does the time go? Her eyes go wide, almost afraid to ask this question. Almost. "Does Travis have a sister?"

Raymond looks at her like a cheeky boy who gets caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Damn. She can't read him anymore and her brain must as well explode with all the mental twisting she's doing. "Shhh…" he places a finger on his lips. "Find her in the roses, Jules. Or maybe she _is_ the rose."

"What? Roses…I don't understand… I…"

But he's gone again, and Julia hates her ex-husband for putting her in the position to actually spend money on a fucking shrink. This is not even remotely healthy.

But she could use that coffee.

Yeah. Coffee sounds good. _Sane_.

—

Being back in this house is a shock to Travis' system.

Coffee is still brewing.

It's like instant autopilot when he knows everything is, but there's a sense of emptiness here and it doesn't look lived in. It feels different. Probably because he's been gone so long and can't see this place the way he used to. His childhood home doesn't feel warm or even cold. It feels like lukewarm. Like his mother is here when she needs to, and leaves the house when her job calls.

There are pictures in frames on the mantle – snapshots in time, he remembers all of them – except the one with the light wooden frame. The picture inside is black and white and an old one.

Travis picks it up, and looks at himself as a baby, about a year maybe. He can't quite pin down the age but he's wearing overalls with no shirt. The kid is the photo is asleep, peacefully held in strong arms (male, he deduces). He looks closer as he sees himself sleeping in the crook of this man's arms. Jeans. The curve of a circle and tip of a feather etched into the arm's skin. Pieces of a tattoo.

He's seen those arms before somewhere. Maybe in a dream, not quite finished being painted or a memory that flashes and then evaporates during the very few quiets he has being on Wall Street. But there's a familiarity there – a thread as thin as the string of a spider web that holds on to that particular tableau of time.

"I'd say penny for your thoughts, but pennies are too cheap."

Travis looks up to see his mother, twirling an envelope in her hands. Her dark hair is tousled looking like the beginnings of a lion's mane. She rubs at her eyes.

"Yeah, well…" he places the picture back, on the mantle. For the first time ever, Travis feels awkward being back here. Like he's disrupted the space of another resident he can't quite see but can strangely feel if that makes any logical sense. He exhales. "You look like you need that coffee."

He makes a move to go back to the kitchen where the coffee has stopped brewing, but his mom touches his arm, "Wait," his mother taps that envelope against her open palm. She's nervous. It's in her demeanour, in her body language and in her eyes. "Listen to me a second, Travis. Please," she smiles, but it's the kind of smile someone gives when trying to cut through intensity with levity. "I had an epiphany today and I realized that in trying to protect you, I've hurt you. I thought… I thought I was doing the right thing and that you and I were enough."

"It's always been us, Mom. You wouldn't hurt me. At least, not intentionally."

Her eyes well up with tears again and Travis is sure she hasn't been sleeping either. She slowly shakes her head, and looks at him with a wry smile, "I love and hate this faith you have in me. For once in your life, I wish you'd get angry. You have the right to," she plays with that chain around her neck, fingering the silver ring that hangs off it. "This ring I wear… it belonged to the same man in that photo you were looking at. I let you grow up and walk through life with parts of you missing and for that, I'm so sorry. It's not right."

Travis is about to refute that it's enough and she needs to stop apologizing. He knows that they are pieces of him that are missing, like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle that are missing and can't be found. He's still figuring out who he is and is almost there. But almost is not okay with him. Almost isn't good enough. Almost doesn't make the up the fog that never fully clears up.

He's surprised to feel something like resentment now. Hell, maybe even a little anger trickle in. But Travis has to be restrained. He has to figure out what emotion works for what situation. Decide where emotion and logic intersect smoothly.

 _Be practical. Be rational. And for the love of whatever divine power is out here, be fair,_ he tells himself _,_ and looks his mother in the eye.

—

"Tell me whose ring that is. What's in the envelope?"

His mother takes a deep breath like she's about to dive into some unknown, even though she knows all these years and carries with her literally.

"The ring. The envelope. That photo. Even the stupid box on the kitchen table I've avoided all this time."

Travis comes home for familiarity and doesn't know what he's about to walk in now.

"Mom, stop! Be straight with me!" Travis nearly snaps because part of him is scared, and then pauses because he's about to break all three mental rules and it's not the way he wants to handle this. The guy painting Wall Street with broken financial hopes and dreams of others in his hands breaks all three without blinking, not him. "I'm trying to understand. I swear I am but you're off and cryptic … Just stop and tell me! Please."

His head is spinning. The living room around him spins.

Is he even breathing right now?

And then –

"Your father, Travis," his mother says, tone stern, devoid of previous emotion and full of truth. It's in her hands. Around her neck. Shining in those green eyes. "All of it ties to your father."

"Why? Why choose _now_ to tell me about him?"

"Because… he shot and killed himself years ago. On this _exact_ date."

Nothing's spinning anymore. Nothing's moving. Just him and all of these missing jigsaw pieces of his being suddenly being found and hitting him all at once. Whether or not, they click and land where they are supposed to is whole another animal. How the hell _are_ they supposed to fit?

"What was his name?"

"What?"

"What was my father's name?"

There's a frustration that catches him by surprise. He could punch a hole in a wall or rip his own hair out. Break a glass. Flip the coffee table over but that's not sane. "You find people's crap for a living, put yourself in dangerous situations where I have to hope you didn't get yourself killed, but you know, it's who you are. I'd never ask you to change. What's my dad's name? I have to know that, at least."

"You do," she says, with a nod. She glances down and taps that envelope against her palm and looks at him again. She tries to touch his arm and he jerks away from as a reflex. He's sorry for the quick look of hurt that flashes across her face. _Later_ , he promises. He'll make up for that later.

"Sorry, I just…"

"Yeah," she says, with all the understanding in the world. "His name was Raymond. Raymond Dean Collins."

Raymond Dean Collins. The ghost, shadow – whatever it is – that weaves itself in and out of different phases of his life has a name attached to it.

Raymond Dean Collins. Travis tumbles the name around in his mind.

"Wait," Travis asks, inquisitively. "If my father's last name was _Collins_ , why is my last Crawford?"

"You were born with his name. I had it changed after he died."

When his mom sighs, it's as if she's gotten rid one weight and taken on another.

"How long are you home for?"

"Couple weeks, but I don't – "

She cuts him off, sharply, but there's a stern look in her eyes and Travis isn't about to argue further and cross that mother-son line drawn now.

"Good. You have a couple hours to listen to the entire story, yeah? Listen. I taught you to process facts and then make your own decisions. That's why you left Wall Street and everything that comes with it – "

"Wait, how do you know that? I never told you that. At least, not in detail."

"I'm your mum," she smirks, lightly tapping his cheek twice, affectionately. "And I had connections at the NYPD checking up on you every now and then."

"Oh."

That's not scary at all, but of course, it's usual when it comes to Julia Crawford.

"As I was saying," she continues on seriously, with a sigh, "the box on the table, this envelope, the wedding ring. It all ties together and you'll have to hear everything and what you do with that information is up to you. Before I tell you, you have to know two things: your father was flawed and human like everyone else, and two," her eyes light up, and the ghost of nostalgic smile appears on her face, "he loved you so, so much. Please believe those things. Really _believe_ them."

"Okay, Mom…okay."

Travis has to be rational and listen. He has to be practical and ask the right questions to get to whatever answer he can live with. And still, he has to be fair – for his mother because it must be her own personal, decades old hell to deal with something like this. He has to expand some fairness to himself too: process what he can and leave what he can't until later. It's the new art of slowing down. Smelling roses and in his case, coffee.

Travis heads into the kitchen for that coffee with her, and finds himself wishing for a little liquor of his own to consume.

 _Your dad was flawed. Your mom is flawed. And so are you._

That's his mantra for the next few hours.

—

Here's what Travis slowly comes to realize:

he's swinging off another swing set at the height of anticipation. When he is down because of knowledge, he will have a picture of Raymond Dean Collins from the person who knows him best.

* * *

 **V.**

" _Some of the hardest battles we fight are those against the demons of our past, over which we have no control."_

— _Charles F. Glassman_

* * *

Julia knows that to properly explain who Raymond is to their son, she must explain herself – not the part of her that Travis knows his entire life or the part of her he knows from other people involved in her life. Truth to be told, at that time in her life, Julia doesn't know who she is and is lost. She's born Lady Julia Elizabeth Crawford, daughter of an English earl. Two sisters as night and day follow her but the spotlight burns a little brighter on her. It burns through every nice dress she wears, her hair is done up beautifully but it hurts and the string of pearls feel like they tighten themselves around her throat.

Svetlana (note: just Lana, for short) is happy to preen like a desperate peacock for the nobles when really, she's a golden haired crow with talons. Nadia is the sweet, good-natured person Julia's ever known with gentle blue eyes from their father, heart shaped face and chestnut brown hair from their mother. Maybe if Nadia's the oldest and not her, life will be different but it's one of those things she will never know.

She remembers her encounter with it – the object inside the box, she's afraid to open. Julia knows the symbolism behind it, why her father leaves it to her even after she is chilly towards him. Julia opens the box as her stomach clenches.

The Dagger.

The pretty foot long knife with a hilt of gold and decorated with dark red garnet stones. It sits, cushioned by soft black velvet and its silver blade glints back at her.

—

"A dagger?"

"Yes," Julia answers almost in a type of exhale, taking a careful sip of her coffee. "That's it. I don't know what is true but we're not descended from nobility. We weren't dirt poor but we had just enough to get by. We had lands. A lot of them but we did work," Julia continues to explain, curving her hands around the mug. "Long story short: the story goes that it was blessed by Celtic druids—"

Travis bites back a laugh, "Druids?"

"Shut up. I'm not in charge of the folklore. Don't laugh," she instructs, trying to be stern by laughing a little herself. "This is serious," she clears her throat and collects herself. It's serious because there's one objective: peeling back Raymond's layers and painting Travis a picture of his father. "Okay…okay… So, yeah, druids and fast-forward centuries later, it was in the possession of the king and there was a criminal convicted of treason and rap. The king brought out that," she gestures the weapon in the old box, "and promised it, title and social status to anyone who…you know," Julia draws an imaginary line across her throat.

She catches the surprised look on his face and then watches as the rest of a story that trickles down his family and weaves itself down the Crawford Family grapevine.

"Wait…the title you and Aunt Lana would kill each other over only landed in our family because an ancestor killed somebody?" he sighs, annoyed. "This is why I left Wall Street but didn't really leave, did I?"

Julia wonders in the back of her mind what in New York causes a sort of jadedness in her son, but that's for another time.

"No – one, I don't want to kill my sister. Annoying her is just a pastime of mine to make up for years of sister related rubbish she's thrown my way and two," she corrects, and goes on explain. "it wasn't murder. Not back then. Especially if you slit the throat of a man found guilty of raping your sister. So, you see, Thomas Crawford restored honor to the family name at seventeen and became the first Earl. He built the house we have in England. Before his time, he knew in the blueprint, he didn't want a grand sprawling property with grand parklands as aristocrats usually did have back then. He wanted a home, and just enough space to have a view facing in the direction of the old family farm he worked sun up to sun down at. Maybe to keep himself humble, is my best guess. Nadia has been working legally to protect the land that the old Crawford farm sat. She tells me she's had Mark work his architecture magic to restore it and expand it a bit. Built a decent sized getaway space there. There's a room there with the portraits of every first born Crawford after him, including me as the first girl to get up there. We can get a portrait of you next to mine when you're ready. But the rest is history."

"I'm lost. What does that have to do with my dad though?"

"He was the guy looking to find himself, and I was the girl looking to escape."

Julia takes another bitter sip of her black coffee and takes in the pensive look on Travis' face and the light bulb flickering over his head until it lights on.

"Thomas is part of your history, despite his humility, so you ran."

Julia exhales and nods. "By Jove, you've got it…"

—

She almost tells Travis that the dagger has a very strange way of cutting first-born children through happenstances and sometimes, on purpose. Julia remembers hers. It's an accident. Nadia does tell her not to play with it.

Her palm has a six-inch gash of fire with her blood rushing to the surface, threatening to spill over. Her mother holds her hand over warm water, instructs Nadia to get the first aid kit.

Julia catches Svetlana glaring, slate grey eyes their own kind of razor blades from across the room. She glares back at her little sister and Lana forces her eyes back to her homework. Lana is blessed with grace especially when she dances. Her sister moves like the wind, weaving in between beats of music and spotlight makes her blond shine like spun gold. Their father calls Lana his butterfly, but Julia knows better and she'll rip her wings off if provoked.

Cold water soothes the cut and it doesn't sting anymore, but it won't stop bleeding. When her father comes home just before bed, he sees the band-aid on her palm.

"Don't worry," her father says, his big hand softly stroking her hair. He smiles, gently and his eyes sparkle. "I have been cut, too."

"Was yours by accident like mine?"

Her father laughs his hearty laugh, kissing her hair. He winks at her, from the doorway.

"Sweet dreams, my curious falcon."

Julia remembers seeing the outline of a faint brown scar on his forearm in the darkness as sleep slowly claims her. Years later, he tells her that the blade of that same dagger catches him when his father cuts him on purpose.

Julia could tell Travis that part, but she will let him figure it out for himself. One day.

—

Being a debutante and neck deep in aristocracy is exhausting and mundane.

Wondering what is across the pond is not. After school in London, she finds herself in New York University studying psychology with a minor in music. The psychology part is interesting and taps into this deep-seeded fascination she has with the human mind. The music part of her is therapeutic. She can't sing to hold a single note, but Julia can close her eyes and let the smoothness of ivory keys soothe her. She can look at a sheet of music with its notes and bars and see beyond the trebles and the clefs.

To this day, Julia can sit in front of a piano and play something by ear as if she never stops.

Six months after graduating with her double degrees, she discovers she's actually nobody here. Her name doesn't matter. Her pedigree doesn't mean shit and she actually loves waitressing at the coffee shop a ten minutes walk from the college. It feels good. She studies, she reads, she socializes like everyone else, discovers that hooking up with a woman isn't bad. At all. Not even taboo. It's an actually an awakening. _Mary_. That's her name. It happens once and after Julia discovers the sexual freedom of exploring another woman's curves, different parts of another female's body like heading into unchartered territory.

Julia can feel the aristocratic woman being torn from her and another part of her she's surprised is even there – this wild, untamed woman who is fucking empowered. She looks at the scar on her palm as a blessing in disguise.

It's a mark of where she comes from and how far into the past her bloodline stretches, but Julia's literally been seesawing on the edge of a blade. So, why not walk along it and see what happens?

Julia the Aristocratic Byproduct dies. Julia the Wild, Free Edge Walking Falcon lives and _soars_.

—

"So…" Travis asks, with a questioning glance, putting down his coffee mug after drinking from it. "Hold on. You had your moment of 'escape' during sex?"

"Odd, but yeah," Julia shrugs, nonchalantly. "I would even venture to say I had been lost for sometime and in that one encounter, I figured out who I was. As a person," she grins, as if the memory happens just yesterday. "I wasn't a lesbian. I know I'm very much attracted to men, but I was experimenting back then. Curious about different sides of myself. That's the whole point of going off to university, right? Or, really going anywhere. I loved working as much as your grandparents supported me financially. But I loved working for something that was mine and wasn't attached to my family, or my name. It felt good."

He sighs and leans back in his chair, "I'm your kid for sure."

Travis looks at her with a soft half-smile. It's equal parts terrifying and comforting how she still sees Raymond behind his eyes.

Actually in actual eight percent in his face.

"You're your dad's son, too," she adds. "You look just like him. Especially his eyes. I'll tell you that when you were born, he was nervous as hell to hold you because you were so tiny, I swear. He glanced at the nurses and they said as long as he supported your head, he'd be fine."

"Well, it would have been bad if he dropped me."

"It's hilarious now, but back then, I had just given birth. All these emotions swirling around. Hormones, epidural, pure joy and I wanted him to experience that so at this time, you're a newborn doing newborn things but I'm exhausted and I just yell, 'Raymond Collins, hold your _bloody_ son now!'"

Julia recalls this and the stunned look on her husband's face.

"Oh my God, you would do something like that!" Travis really laughs, while she's laughing so hard, she's wiping tears from her eyes.

"So…so, you start crying, wailing actually in my arms and I'm glaring at him to come soothe you. He looks at me and says," Julia goes into her best impersonation of Raymond, his voice fresh and still engraved in her mind, "'Are you insane?' he asks me. Despite questioning my sanity and his nervousness, he held you. He finally takes you out of my arms and instantly, he became your dad and just like that," she snaps her fingers, "you stopped crying. Then out of nowhere, he started singing _Hey Jude_ , and rocking you like he'd done it a thousand times."

"Ah…" Travis says, realizing. "That's how I got my middle name."

"Yes."

A pause.

"Wow."

"Yeah. It's one of my favourite memories of him. When we wasn't battling his demons and he wasn't in the throes of his stuff, he was a really gentle guy. He was gruff, and looked intimidating, but he was a sweetheart. When he held you and you opened your eyes," Julia explains, now with bittersweet tears in her eyes. Travis grows somber, quiet actually. "He told me you were an old soul. I really wish you had the chance to truly meet him."

"Me too, but you know the crazy thing," Travis glances up from his coffee, and stares at her. He really does have his father's eyes. "I feel like I already have in some subconscious kind of way. That picture," he jerks a thumb behind his shoulder, "I feel like I've seen those arms before. It's like a moment where I see 'em and then I blink and it's gone. What's the tattoo about?"

"Ah, the dream catcher. One, his Native American heritage. Well, that was the first thing I noticed when I met him before I noticed everything else. I did ask him eventually and he told it was to keep the bad dreams in his head away," Julia explains, quietly. "I didn't…I didn't think anything of it, but hindsight is 20/20. For all your father's good parts, he had dark parts too."

There are silver linings in storm clouds.

Sometimes, it's soothing to her to have Seattle rain hit her skin. But Julia stops when she can to look at the rainbows. It reminds her of home and she would love to be able to gaze at the Thames and empty her head.

"Your dad was…complicated."

"Complicated how?"

Julia runs a hand through her hair, lightly. "I told you your father was struggling to find himself. If I knew back then what I know now, things would have been totally different," she wraps her arms around herself, as if trying to protect herself before she kicks another Pandora's Box open. "Your father was a broken man and I thought if I loved him enough, it would be okay. But only after his death, did I realize that it had nothing to do with me."

"Stop. If it's too hurtful, stop. You've told me enough," Travis says, with a guilty look on his face. It irritates her that he's guilty, that he's feeling bothered by the truth, and that he is okay with the surface of it because of her wellbeing.

Julia can't control snapping at him, but her nerves are taut. This is how it is: she tries to tell him, the story gets to a dark point neither want to face beside Travis' guilt and her own fear impedes them, but that stops today. They have been there her whole adult life, waiting to be told. The story starts that day she meets Raymond at an outdoor concert. The band escapes her but she remembers that it was spring, she wears a sundress and is in the throes of euphoria. Julia will never, ever forget how the story ends and Travis _has_ to know.

"You need to stop! If I don't tell you now, I never will!"

Julia recalls a memory of Raymond curled up in the fetal position, his head in her lap. Her baby bump is small and her simple skinny wedding ring is silver and new. Her husband is trembling and she strokes his hair to calm him down. _She's in the tree, Jules. Mom's in the tree and she won't come down. Her dress… is really, really beautiful. She's so beautiful and it's making her ugly. I can't touch her… The ground's gonna… it's gonna open up and swallow her…_

Travis looks her like a person about to jump off a ledge. But it all burns.

The words burn in Julia's throat and her memories leave her angry.

"Mom, you don't—"

"Your father had bipolar disorder!" Julia screams, the words filling the entire house like smog. Her accent gets sharper, the more agitated she is. She's aware. "He had horrid mental illness. It was like fucking Jekyll and Hyde…" she starts, feeling her chest clench and brings up a trembling hand to wipe at her eyes. She's rambling and after all this time, an emotional damn bursts on the inside. "He shot himself! Left me! Left you! And all the police gave me was his wedding ring and that stupid letter with your name on it!"

She starts sobbing and curses herself because she can't stop.

Neither does the blood spreading wider and wider on the floor as if it will consume everything in its path. She remembers that to this day.

She can remember the blood. She can remember the music that plays throughout the apartment. A dead Lennon's voice carries and permeates everywhere and when the lyrics of _Watching The Wheels_ strike her like the blade of another knife meeting her skin. She cannot breathe. Julia can't remember whether Raymond's blood, thick as it is, is crimson or black.

—

Julia doesn't tell Travis that Raymond's own mother suffers mental illness that causes her to hang herself from the biggest tree in the yard when he is just seven. She won't heap that on him but if he asks, she will be happy to piece together what Raymond tells her years ago.

She watches Travis for years after with bated breath, questioning if he is genetically destined to fight with demons of his own mind. She will love him regardless, of that she is sure. She knows her son will have to fight everywhere else. After researching and consulting Lana on a medical level, Julia learns that bipolar has genetic components but environmental ones too. Julia only releases that breath when she realizes Travis is sharp as a tack, absolutely brilliant on an intellectual level, really, and whatever emotion he is going through is just a byproduct of being human. His feelings aren't swinging on the same erratic pendulum as his father. His emotions are kept inside the heart he decides to wear on his sleeve – good and bad.

—

There's also the part after Raymond's death she does tell him because why not? Travis might as well know:

Julia returns home with no possible avenue and to figure out what the hell she will do at that point. She's not a medical student like Lana. She's not on her way to being a lawyer like Nadia. She's just recently widowed now with a small child she has to provide for with uncertainty staring her in the face.

She sobs not only because Julia never really grieves for him the way a healthy, normal person should. That's just it. None of this is normal.

Her mother isn't happy about the circumstances but understands and is overjoyed to meet her grandson and holds her at night when she cries. Her father, adores Travis instantly the way a father would look at their son. But when he looks at her, Julia sees the clear disappointment and blame towards her in his eyes. It's one of the few times in her life where she feels so small that crawling into a deep dark hole would be a better alternative. It's her mistake. This is her consequence and Travis is her baby. Julia vows to be a fair parent, one that can be disappointed but never ever shame Travis for any life choice he makes.

No child wants to feel the sting of parental disappointment. On the other hand, her father makes her feel the heaviness of shame and it leaves a crack in their relationship that will never be filled. Of course, Julia loves her father and always will but there's a resentful undertone in any type of interaction. It's just a dance she has with her father now and she prefers let things lie.

The first thing Julia does when she returns to Seattle is rent another apartment with enough room for her and Travis. Sticks to her waitressing job and works to get her private investigator's license. Julia starts her PI work from inside the apartment after quitting her job so she can get business and take care of her son at the time. Her mother supports her and Travis during the time in between a plateau until Julia lands a high profile infidelity case she cracks wide open. Business rolls in, the money gets higher and higher and soon, Julia Crawford is the one of the most sought private investigators in Seattle.

Soon, this private investigator thing works out, pays pretty damn well and the rest as they say is history.

Pain makes her claw her way and fight but she hates that she has to feel it in the first place. It hardens her so she softens the blow of any future pain. Naivety is not something Julia will never engage in again.

"Raymond's death changed me," Julia sniffles, long after she's collected herself and she truly spent, "and your grandfather's disdain offended me enough to work for myself and I did it. But…"

"…there's always the question of why," Travis finishes for her. He glances away, and isn't touching his coffee anymore before meeting her gaze, watery as her eyes are. "Thank you. This was painful and I don't have a clear picture of my father yet. But I have something," he shrugs, loosely. "Guess all that's left is for me to do process it."

"Yeah," Julia nods. "And you do it your own way, hear me?"

"Yes, I hear you," Travis' face has softened, and he holds her hand across the table. "But you have to do the same too, y'know? And please get some sleep. You can't be _that_ nocturnal."

Usually, Julia has a rebuttal on the tip of her tongue. But she's truly in awe of this man she's raised. Or tries her best to.

There's just a little bit of tension and in Travis Jude Crawford fashion, he breaks it.

Warmth and a funny remark.

"I think it's pretty cool that I have some Native American in me."

"Mmmhmm," Julia intones, with a smile and for the first time in years, something starts to come loose in her soul. Perhaps, that cry is needed to purge it somehow but it weirdly works. She taps a nail against an empty glass. "I was also curious about your grandmother's side because I didn't know too much. I had a really great genealogist friend trace your great-grandmother's side from your grandmother's Russian line and it seems that we're a bit Hungarian too. Just a tad. I mean, we're distant descendants of Elizabeth Bathory or something. They in turn had roots in Transylvania."

"You mean…the Countess who was rumoured to have bathed in blood and killed her servant girls?"

"Yup," Julia fixes him with a light glare, one that has playfulness. Travis goes to open his mouth but she closes it for him. She knows what he'll say and it's the best part of their relationship – knowing what the other will say. She sighs, rubbing her head. "Yes, I get the irony. My middle name's Elizabeth and I get to be the damn Countess of Bath when your grandfather dies because the Queen changed rules of succession. Our family heirloom is a centuries old glorified switchblade that has the tendency to scar first-borns for some reason I, for once, will not question."

"Nah. Not this one. I'm bucking the system."

"I thought that, too as a child. Until it happened. I told you so, in advance."

"We'll see then, won't we?"

"We shall…"

Travis laughs, remarking sarcastically, "Joan of Arc in our family tree, too?"

Julia smirks, "Well…"

"Mom…"

Then she laughs, clapping her hands, "God, the look on your face! I needed that. I'm kidding. I'm kidding," Julia shakes her head in the no direction. "We have enough Europe in us. France is not there. Promise."

Here's what Julia doesn't tell Travis: she's curious about that Joan of Arc but no, there's no French in her veins. And she's okay with it. She's slowly coming to be okay with the lines of her past that may intersect with her present and maybe even future. Shit happens.

She wishes the same for Travis. Not only as his mother, but as a human being.

—

First step into semi-normalcy in the present is storing Raymond's ring in a safe place for Travis one day. Maybe when he decides marriage is for him and if it's not, well, that's okay too. The second step is to probably return Delgado's calls regarding any updates on the Caldwell homicide case (and whatever else may be hanging between them, because something _always_ is), and the third – get some sleep. Lots of it. Then after she wakes up. Julia can work with a clear head and find the girl in the roses.

* * *

 **VI.**

" _If you want to be happy, be."_

— _Leo Tolstoy_

* * *

Despite the enlightenment, Travis is about to leave with some questions that loom in between the answers his mom gives him. Maybe they are in this envelope, this envelope that contain the words of a father he doesn't know quite yet. Frankly, he isn't sure that if he's ready for that kind of clarity.

He shrugs on his jacket and stands in the doorway. Now, it's him twirling this envelope in his hands before Travis mentally tells himself to stop and slow down.

"You're going to be here for a couple weeks, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course," Travis answers, and explains with a small smile of excitement. He has something in the works and if he strikes while the iron is still hot, the remainder of the quarter of a million from Walt will be used for something good. "I'm just getting something lined up during that time and getting to know home again. It's been good."

"Care to share what this impending venture is?"

Basically, it comes down two things: seeing a bar that's up for sale and he's absolutely in love with. The owner, Hank, about to retire and Travis is all about starting over so why not buy it himself? It's logical and the jukebox is his favourite feature, honestly. He's already secured an apartment nearby that's a pretty decent living space.

"Well," he smiles, proudly, "I'm in the middle of being a bar owner in Genoa City."

Green eyes blink back at him. "Genoa City, Wisconsin? Wow. The Midwest? That's new, but guess that's the allure."

"I know, I know. It was random to me at first and then I decided to go for it. It'll be a change of scenery. New place. New people. I'm just waiting on pins and needles for the call, telling me. Pretty much it after that."

"Ah," a dismissive wave of her hand, and tap on his arm of assurance. "No kid of mine does nervous. You'll get it," she turns serious, for a moment. "I just want you happy, Travis. That's it. Whatever will give you fulfillment and makes you want to wake up in the morning. If you moved to the moon and you got all that, I'd be fine," she kisses his cheek, hugs him tightly and he hugs her back.

She pulls away, lightly tapping his arm. "Go be happy."

"I will," Travis replies and is about to leave until he turns back to his mother. "Hey, do me a favour and ease on Grandfather…just a little. I know it hurt but your dad is still alive. Life is really short. I want you to be happy, too."

She sighs, folding her arms, looking away. "What? Did he go to New York and tell you what a living, breathing cactus I was?"

"Not in those words…"

His mother shakes her head, morosely, "The money, the title, it was his but it wasn't mine. I am okay with that. I was happier being a single mother who had to work than I would have been surrounded by privilege like _he_ wanted me to – like he wanted you to, and I said, I would raise you myself no matter how hard," she speaks softly and there's something like hurt in her eyes – dark green as an always standing evergreen tree and sometimes, sparkling and a light green the same as mint, cool and soothing with edges in the periphery. Yeah, that's my mother, Travis thinks. But she's somebody's daughter. "Sweetheart, I made my life choices and paid for them. The day I look at you and realize I've made you feel the same he made me, I have absolutely failed as a parent. I love your grandfather but…" she trails off, with a bitter laugh and stares at her feet. "Ever since I went home with you after your father died, he's never told me he was proud of me. Not once in God knows how long. But it's foolish, right?" she questions, looking him in the eyes again. "Grown woman and I'm seeking validation from a father who won't give it."

"Meet him halfway, Mom."

Mom pauses. Travis can't get the hurt look on his grandfather's face and the regret still in his eyes out of his headspace.

"Can you let that Wall Street part of you go?"

He wants to protest and says absolutely. Travis is out of New York, but if he does a little of bit of introspection he will come to the realization that he can't reconcile that part of himself with who he is now. It's like trying to fit a square peg into a circular hole, shoving it with all the strength he can muster. It's not a smooth fit. He knows that mentally going in. But Travis knows those edges, those corners can't go past circular hole all the way through and the square peg remains locked in place.

"I want to. I didn't… I didn't like that guy. I jumped off a swing set again to realize that – more mentally than literally this time. That Wall Street life shattered for me," he confesses, under his mother's knowing glance. "I did a lot of shitty things out things there and getting you and Grandfather to see eye-to-eye would make me feel better. I know it's selfish but…"

"Do you know how much I love you for that? He knows I love him. Deeply. But this resentment I carry is something I have to fix. Or, not fix. I hate that he won't acknowledge it but this is between us. It's not your burden to carry. You think about your own father and what you do with what information you have," she says sternly, nodding at the envelope still in his hands. "Don't add worrying about me and my father to that. I'm not nocturnal but you're not Atlas either."

There's something between the lines – some unspoken thing that causes the threads of parent and child to break and never really rebuild. Travis watches his mother barely flinch – could be involuntary, a reflex – feeling the sting of a faraway memory that feels very new to her.

He feels it in his gut – it's great to have that instinct alive and kicking again – that it's something beyond what Mom tells him and it just scratches the surface.

Surface is fine. Travis carries enough intensity with him to last several lifetimes over, the letter from his father becoming a shadow all on its own.

 _Read me. Open me. Read –_

He sighs, throwing his hands up in surrender. "Okay…okay. Can't say I didn't try."

"Thank you. We'll take a hike through Puget Sound before you leave, yeah?"

Travis agrees and kisses her cheek. Puget Sound. God, he misses that place. There's that and he might just add his own wad of gum to the notorious Gum Wall in Post Alley before he leaves. He does it as a child, does it again as a teenager and has to do it as an adult.

His practical side says it's teaming with years and years of germs.

The part of that is born and raised in this place tells – and yep, mentally he's just that blunt – that practical part of him to basically shut the hell up.

The Gum Wall is colourful. It's…yeah, pretty gross but it's _Seattle_.

Travis leaves with two feelings: that he's more grounded in his roots – in more aspects than just the biological ones. Some of those puzzle pieces do fit together and others don't. He also leaves with the feeling of realizing that he has gaping hole instead of this whole time, being filled bit by bit.

He looks at the letter from his dad and wonders if he should even open it.

No, he decides while getting into his car and pulling away from driveway. But Travis will open it and read it when the time is right.

He is learning to pick his battles and makes the firm decision that he knows enough.

—

Travis is driving and takes the long way to the hotel, as to imprint pieces of home in his mind. He makes sure to engrave this. He drives past a strip mall that's just a general store when he knows it to be a general store. Mr. and Mrs. Brimley are long dead now. He remembers the man who gives him candy and the woman he gives him his first real job at thirteen.

He drives by the cemetery with his iron gates and tombstones that stand up or grave markers that closer to the ground. It's hard to not instinctively drive in and ask where Raymond Dean Collins rests. The knife of curiosity cut him deeper than any dagger passed down through generations possibly can. It leaves a new scar on Travis' psyche and a part of him can't imagine his dad's internal struggle.

Travis then finds himself pulling his blue-eyed gaze away from the cemetery and stepping on the accelerator to leave that place in the rear view mirror a little quicker. His father's death – really, a suicide his mom does not foresee happening, much less walking into – leaves the strongest woman he knows, a pressure cooker that simmers and explodes years later. Even superheroes break but he's in awe of his mom's ability to not sink in the quicksand of her past.

The cemetery gets farther and farther away, disappearing like a slight of hand.

One day he will come back to Seattle and he promises a small promise to come to this cemetery, walk past its iron gates and find his father's grave marker.

Travis just wants to get back to the hotel, rest, and watch the moment where the sun and Lake Washington meet.

A sunset that is different in his eyes every time.

—

Travis is now the son of Raymond Dean Collins – he has a name. He is just an actual ghost and part of the afterlife in some shape. His father is no longer that much of a stranger to him or an enigma. The seemingly random twinges of familiarity make sense to him now. With a sigh, Travis takes in the ugly picture of his father's life struggle – because it is, in fact, ugly. It's twisted, in knots that can't been loosened, somewhere teetering between reality and fantasy until it all explodes in bullets, and gunpower with the colour of crimson pooling around him.

He's always believed that he's somewhat of an atheist. But there's something like hope. Or even instances of chance that can't be explained with numbers and statistics. Travis doesn't pray. He doesn't follow his traditional Catholic family into learning Hail Mary's or asking God to cleanse him of whatever sins committed.

If anything, Travis learns that saints and sinners are in this life and humans are not just one or the other. They just reside in the murky area between. He suffocates in the murkiness of Wall Street just like his dad probably suffocates being pulled under into the muddy waters of his head.

He glances quickly at the envelope resting on the empty passenger when he stops at a red light.

Travis hopes that wherever his dad is he finds the semblance of peace in death that evades him in life.

—

His mother is just a woman born of British nobility and honestly, one of the strongest women he knows.

Travis is in awe of her, her ability to claw and fight, rebel against the rigid system for a cause that she can be proud of because it's hers. That's what she taught him even at their lowest when they have nothing but each other. She's a woman who could choose to give him everything with a snap of a finger but she doesn't. His mother makes him work, teaches him the value of earning something and helps him understand that sometimes, life just is not fair and that it is not a bad thing to see pessimism in things. From that, sprouts realism.

Life comes at someone fast. Sometimes, it comes straight ahead. Other times, life decides to show itself as darkness _and_ light. In the rarest of occasions, life comes to a person and bends to be a curveball until it becomes a boomerang and changes the trajectory of a story as a whole.

His mother is beautiful. Powerful. A woman who devotes her life to chasing down life instead of letting it beat her into the dust.

Travis, however, fears that his mother chases life with laser tunnel vision. He's scared she will run around so fast that she becomes nothing but a blur.

He hopes that his mom can stop running and be still.

Stillness is pretty great although it is still a learning process for him.

—

He's still the grandson of a man who is entrenched in old school tradition, enjoys a solid pint of beer. When his grandfather laughs, it's truly from his heart.

His mother's voice reverberates softly as the wind in his head, _The money, the title, it was his but it wasn't mine. I am okay with that._

Travis is essentially has noble nature with blue collared nurture.

He hopes that his grandfather will be less rigid about family trees and duties and just let things fall wherever they should. His upbringing is hard and yeah, he's a biological rich kid with a single mother who refuses to allow him to be dazzled by the money.

Perhaps that's why Travis falls down the Wall Street rabbit hole – something that's so instinctual and so easy to do because it's in his blood. He pulls over his car, rubbing his face to detangle a knot in the corner of his head. Self-awareness kicks in and he drives – yes, actually drives from state to state – away from New York all the way to his humble Washington roots.

Finally, Travis turns into the hotel parking lot.

Maybe Thomas Crawford is a kid who acts out of honour, instinct or even because of initiative but it's nice to know that he's descended from working people. It takes a lot of guts to right a wrong under the prying eyes of so many people. He can imagine Thomas being scared as hell yet driven by adrenaline and a need to defend a woman's honour. Travis won't judge his ancestor for that. He doesn't know the story enough anyway.

He hopes that his grandfather sees that the family roots aren't really about all that tradition and British aristocratic ladder. He can't hope that his grandfather will do an about face on centuries of decorum. Travis can't hope that his grandfather will suddenly do an about face on something that has duty and guilt on his part attached to it.

Travis is just hoping his grandfather can expand a bit.

Embrace the simple stuff. Have more pints of beer.

—

"Travis, do not hope for virtues if you do not hope for flaws," he remembers his grandmother telling him in English as a teenager when she makes a surprise visit to Seattle. She says this in English before switching to Russian. It's always Russian when she wants to get into the heavy, intense stuff with him because he understands. Not just linguistically. "I foolishly aspire to have virtue and be a good person. But good people sin, too. Sins are good. Be wrong if you must but have the shades of awareness underneath it."

Travis is not exactly a believer in psychic people. There's no such thing.

However, he realizes that his grandmother is as wise as she is still beautiful to him. She seems to have more than five senses, or perhaps, a third eye. He doesn't know. He has nothing to hope for her when it comes to her aside from the fact, she live a good, long life. She deserves that. She deserves the world.

He wants to thank her for seeing what he can't at the time.

Travis hopes to have a tenth of the wisdom she has.

That's it.

—

Somewhere in between parking his car, walking through the lobby and getting on the elevator to the third floor, he gets a call.

 _The_ call.

It's not long, but it's what he wants.

The gravelly voice on the other end, Hank, says, "The place is yours, kid," he continues on, explaining. "Y'know…I bought this place on my tenth wedding anniversary to my Nancy, may God rest her soul… My daughter, Sylvie, is my only child and is a teacher in Nevada. I got grandbabies, my daughter and son-in-law want me to come live with them. It's hard but a change might do me good," his voice is filled with nostalgia and a bit of sadness. "Nancy would want me to."

"I'm glad you trust me with the place."

"Nancy and I danced here to the jukebox the first night I bought it," Hank – the gentleman insists Travis call him by his first name when he's just trying to polite, manners and all – says, sagely. "Y'know what, son? I hope you find a beautiful girl to dance with in here."

Travis nearly laughs at the idea. No, it won't happen. He just wants to be a bar owner. Have a life. Not have some cataclysmic event happen to him. It never will anyway. Genoa City doesn't exactly scream alive. It's a more compact, and half-asleep of a little town in Walworth Country.

"Nah, I don't think so…"

"This place is magic. You never know. I hope you enjoy it and love it as much as I did over the years."

"I will," Travis promises, containing his euphoria. "Thank you, Hank."

"Happy to do it. Just get here in the two weeks you need for the keys and to put your John Hancock on the lease. Always good to help a fellow Washington man out," Hank says to Travis' surprise and adds proudly. "Born and raised in Tacoma."

Travis grins and promises to get to Genoa City in two weeks – hell, even ten days – to finalize the purchase this little bar on the edges of town and hangs up.

It's not Wall Street and the money isn't going to be great, but it will be _his_.

Travis realizes two things as he turns the key and steps into his hotel room, and with a sigh of release and a smile of anticipation:

a) he finds his bliss and,

b) no matter what words his dad writes, he will still be happy because well, he can.

* * *

 **VII.**

" _The past never where you think you left it."_

— _Katherine Anne Porter_

* * *

Julia will be honest in saying that she does go upstairs with the full intention of sleeping for a few hours. However, as liberating and freeing as it to tell Travis about Raymond, she can't turn off her mind. It makes enough sense to drive her to take the ring necklace off and store it in her jewellery box but not enough sense to let the girl in the roses go. She can't stop the curiosity that has gripped her and the caffeine buzzing underneath her skin.

Delgado's with her because one, she need to be brought to speed on that murder case and someone here that can be honest. She respects Matthew for that and a whole lot of more she cares to admit.

Julia has to peel back more layers of her dead husband's life, or really, hone in on his past. Who the fuck marries a man, and has a baby with them only to not know where he comes from before that? She does. But at the time, Julia doesn't need to know the past. The past is just that – the past and if Julia can keep her past as a girl who is saturated in British aristocracy then surely, Raymond can keep his pre-Seattle life to himself. She's got a momentum going here and now that she has closed one chapter, she opens the chapter writing on a pad of yellow lined paper: Girl in the Roses. She chuckles. Sounds like a bad, cheesy romance novel she'd throw in the fire.

She knows all the surface stuff and can rattle off them even now long after Raymond lives and has breath in his body. Julia ties her up in a messy bun and some dark tendrils still manage to free themselves. Okay. Favourite food. Chinese takeout although Raymond is never that wild about egg rolls. Favourite colour? Dark, forest green and sometimes navy blue. Favourite kind of liquor? Anything that goes down smooth and finally, the loose thread in a thread of time Julia has to make straight.

Raymond is born in Detroit, Michigan. It's a neon sign of information in the darkness. She hears him tell her that Motor City is home and a kind of beautiful he'd love to be back in but sometimes, beautiful things turn ugly. Sometimes, Julia remembers him saying, _you have sweet dreams but the distant, soft growling noise you hear are the claws of monsters under your bed._

Julia tells Delgado the whole story, because…well, honesty and such. There's that and she may or may not feel bad for high kicking him in the face during one of their workout drills. Another reason is not really because she is scared of what she may find – the world is a scary place and her path has made sure she's neck deep in it. This is too close to her, may be even closer to Travis and she continues to buzz with curiosity and caffeine.

Delgado's brown eyes look at her like she's developed six extra heads, his mouth pressed in a thin line and his hand rubbing the back of his neck. He always does look decent with the salt and pepper he's got going but that's not the point.

Julia grows tired of feeling the heat of his stare, raising her green eyes from the hard copy of Travis' birth certificate. She prefers hard copy and good old notebooks with pens and pencils. It's easier to organize and reshuffle things around in synergy with the non-linear way her mind works.

"You're gawking at me. What is it?"

"Get some damn sleep, Julia. I know you work in Vampire Standard Time, but damnit, get some sleep."

She glares at him, defiantly. "Are you going to carry me? Tuck me in? Even tell me a story?" she remarks, sarcastically and then she turns serious. "Because I just spent hours finally telling my kid about his dad. Only for the man to haunt me and tell me about a girl in _fucking_ roses."

"He haunted you."

"Yes."

He sighs, pauses and then nods. "Okay. Let's look at this from our specific perspectives. Let's start with theory. Girl in the roses," he stands to his full height, badge at his left hip, and gun holstered on the right. "It could be literal, figurative or from what you've told me, your son's dad had mental illness. That could mean she's literally dead like the way a rose dies and there's some trauma. Or, maybe she's not dead at all and - I don't know - figuratively, she's done the opposite and bloomed all these years in his absence."

"That's the thing," she groans, rubbing her face. "He almost always spoke in metaphors," Julia brandishes Travis' certificate. She sighs, and scans it as Delgado behind her over her shoulder. The musk of his cologne wafts around her like haze, her heart racing but it's just the caffeine. It's always the caffeine, right? Julia shakes her head to snap out of it. "Yeah, uh… so, Raymond was odd that way but I've always believed there was some truth."

Delgado blinks at her and it sounds like he's releasing a breath he holds since he got here. He's the police detective. She's the private investigator.

That's pretty much how it is. It has to be.

He moves back, crosses his arms. "You knew."

Julia's suddenly confused, raising an eyebrow, "Knew what?"

"About the fact that you have to look in his past," he deduces, matter-of-factly. His features soften and there are edges of warmth in his tone. "Why am I even here? You can do this by yourself with your arm tied by your back."

Julia nods towards of her office door, "Right, then. Leave. Go stop a bank robbery."

There's something like hurt in these dark brown eyes, but Julia like to think he knows her well enough to know she isn't scared of much. He nods, slowly, processing it. She doesn't mean to snap at him and her sternum feels painful in her chest. Julia can feel the cracks etched in her skin, slowly spreading all over her.

It's not easy to be vulnerable, or to be open. The last person Julia gets naked – literally and figuratively – for chooses a bullet to end his life. When she does it again because she falls back into the notion that blood is thicker than water, Julia is ripped to pieces and never looks at her father the same way again.

"Fine," Delgado rubs his palms on his pants and sticks his hands in his pockets. "I'll get you that homicide update, Crawford. You need that."

"I appreciate it," she replies softly with a shadow of a smile of her lips. Julia watches him, back facing her and his hand on the doorknob. She has no ring necklace to fiddle with and settle her nerves. There's a sharp intake of breath before her mouth unexpectedly rushes ahead of her head. That stupid, law-loving, irritating, funny, warm man with dimples about to go has always been in her head. "Matthew, I… I don't know what I need in the long term, but in the short term…"

Air rushes at her again charged with that same electricity she nor him cannot understand. Or, maybe they do understand and don't want to say it out loud. They are rarely Matthew & Julia. When they are, it's a labyrinth.

Green collides warm brown like healthy dark soil of the earth grounding the roots of a plant, its foliage bright, green and taking in sunlight.

Delgado turns to her, smiling and it reveals a dimple in his cheek. He steps to her and his bigger tanned hand holds her smaller one. Julia feels gentle sparks.

"You're gonna figure it out either way, Julia."

She can't help but smile, even laugh a little. "Even though my main hunch comes from a ghost?"

"I still think you're crazy, but I'm used to it," he places a kiss to her knuckle, the lightest one and Julia finds herself blushing. She gently retrieves her hand and he glances down before he scratches his head. "Let me get you that Caldwell update before you kick me in the face again, Crawford."

"You're never going to let that go, will you?" Julia asks, playfully at his back as he strides to the door.

"Nope!" Delgado calls out as he walked out of her office, down the steps and Julia hears the distant sound of her front door closing with a lock. That's what it's reverted to now. _Crawford & Delgado_. That's easy.

Easy is good. Julia still feels his lips on her hand.

She forces herself not to feel the warmth of a blush on her face.

This maze of the past won't be easy, but Julia doesn't want easy. Never has.

—

Working through this, Julia has no concept of time.

 **THEORY:** Travis has half-sister.

 **POSSIBILITY 1:** Could be true.

 **POSSIBILITY 2:** Could be false.

 **POSSIBILITY 3:** Could be actual insanity.

Her laptop is on and her pad of paper is filled with writing in black and blue ink. She scans Travis' birth certificate again for any information and starts with her and Raymond.

 **MOTHER:** CRAWFORD, JULIA ELIZABETH

 **PLACE OF BIRTH:** SOMERSET, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM

 **FATHER:** COLLINS, RAYMOND DEAN

 **PLACE OF BIRTH:** DETROIT, MICHIGAN

Ancestry dot com is a crapshoot and she's not going to pay for it, but the free 30-day trial is long enough. There will probably be nothing but if she has to go down to Detroit herself, then fine. Only after Travis leaves in two weeks. _Only after_ , she promises.

Reading glasses on, phone on vibrate and pen in her teeth, she says a non-denominational prayer and types in Raymond's information, everything she knows from memory and hits the enter.

"Oh…"

—

She scribbles furiously on her yellow pad. Point form. Little pieces, here and there. Pieces of a bigger puzzle. _Maybe she is the rose_ , Julia hears Raymond's disembodied voice in her head. _Find her, Jules_. Find the girl in the roses. _She lies in thorns sometimes, too._

She rolls her eyes and says quietly no one, with agitation, "I'll find her, you pushy bastard."

\- father: Byron Louis Collins – steel worker (ah, blue collared family)

\- mother: Adelaide Sharon Collins – homemaker (Raymond says she died when he was seven; suicide by hanging)

Julia comes across a newspaper article, dated slightly around Raymond's seventh birthday so her theory is close to becoming fact. She feels a degree of sadness. The print is aged, black and white. The language is dated as expected but for one brief moment in time sees it: the black and white grainy picture of a woman held by a rope around her neck in a noose. Her hair falls into her face as her neck is bent. _It's broken_ , Julia realizes in horror. _Her neck is broken_. She's limp and Julia's almost asking why the fuck has nobody cut this woman down? Why have they left her up there long enough to take pictures? Anger bubbles up somewhere deeply where almost the human soul lies – the part of the human being that holds pieces of their essence. She's a human being – someone's mother, someone's daughter, someone's wife, someone's something meaningful. Why is this woman a morbid zoo exhibit?

To her surprise – or not – even though she breaks her number one cardinal when investigating (note: don't let your emotions trickle in), Julia feels her vision blur with her own tears and quickly whips them away. She's got to step out herself and for a few more minutes and stop being Raymond's ex-wife, and Travis' mother.

It's juxtaposed next to a photo of Adelaide from the neck up. It could be a glamour shot. Could it be a homemaker wanting to be more? Could this photo be a lucky shot in a mundane situation that a camera happens to catch? She's striking. Almost ethereal. She's gorgeous with light eyes, hair neatly tied in a chignon and a wide brimmed hat slanted over one eye. It's as if she glows yet she is mysterious and doesn't glow too brightly, or too openly.

 _Addie_ , they call her. Julia picks apart every feature of this beautiful face. Her skin almost without flaw, kind eyes tinged with torment, her button nose, almond shaped eyes that are green because Raymond tells her so. Green is his favourite colour and Julia's own eyes are a shade of green. Red lips in a coy smile that looks like they hold all of life's most important secrets.

Raymond bears a stronger resemblance to his mother seventy five percent of the time. Byron Collins' features, Julia notes, are hard as if chiselled from stone. Ol' Byron Blue, they call him. _My old man's eyes. Never stared into 'em. They were icy cold and could break a person. His hands may have broken her, but his eyes killed her. Our beautiful boy. He's got baby blues but my mom's in his eyes, Jules_ , she remembers Raymond saying one night while he nestles six-week Travis in the crook of his arm after another night feeding. Travis definitely has both his grandparents' features. Bits and pieces but more than anything, the strongest are the eyes.

She furrows a brow, and jots down beside Byron's name with an asterisk – abusive?

Julia pulls her glasses off her glasses and lets them clatter with a light toss. It's a dark thought, one that doesn't swirl around in her head for decades. She would never vocalize it. Julia would never give it breath when it's dead in some far off corner of her mind and faded like a pencil mark never truly erased yet gone enough. But this is bringing it all back: the darkness she feels about Raymond's suicide, the uncertainty of her and her son's future and the scar she chooses to inflict upon herself by having an abortion. If she isn't sure how to raise one in her circumstance, how can she do so with two?

Her father never really forgives her for that and shames her for a choice that is _necessary_. In turn, Julia never forgives him for nearly killing her with the weight of his blame. It's so heavy that she thinks in the midst of her thoughts whipping into a storm. In a moment of weakness and despair, she could swallow all these pills, fall sleep and _not_ wake up.

Julia maintains the only reason she stops staring at the white pills in her trembling, tear soaked palm is Travis' cry after he awakes from a nap.

"Mama!"

Travis saves her, ultimately.

Julia cries, dumping the handful of medication in the toilet and watching them swirl down into a watery abyss and chooses to live. She's sorry for a moment she thinks she could go through with it. She's sorry for a moment she could leave her mother to bury her first-born child. It takes years for Julia to forgive herself for thinking of ever leaving her child. She's sorry she makes the scenario of Nadia and Lana seeing her in a wooden box, lifeless and dead, even a possibility.

—

She won't ever forgive her father for pushing her to that brink in the first place by salting her wounds with feelings of failure. Julia could be Addie. But she fights not to be and wins. She's just sad this broken woman can't do the same and leaves her seven-year-old son to see her that way as a parting gift.

—

One thing Julia quickly picks up by sheer common sense and hones in her line of work is to look for anomalies even in places and things that are the most normal. Every place, every situation, and every word spoken has a hidden meaning and a hidden context.

Julia draws a rectangular shape around where she's written Adelaide Sharon Collins (note: maiden name, Blake).

Separately, these are just two names that are normal. Used everyday by parents who use these names for whatever subjective reason or meaning. For instance, Julia and her sisters all have English names that have Russian forms to honour both heritages. Her father's English accent curves and weaves itself around their names when he pronounces them. _Julia Elizabeth. Lana Charlotte. Nadia Mary_. However, her mother still says their names whether speaking in English or Russian with sharpness in their ears but normal to hers. _**Yulia. Svetlana. Nadya**_.

 **Adelaide Sharon**.

It's a weird combination that doesn't come off the tongue as smoothly. It sounds phonetically disjointed like musical dissonance. It's ironic since Addie's mind could have been a minefield of dissonance, passed down to her son and skips hers.

Julia types in the _meaning of name_ _Adelaide_ in Google's search and puts her glasses to read or rather skim.

"…French origin meaning noble…"

Of course, she recognizes who Queen Adelaide is. English consort of William IV.

Next she types in _meaning of name of Sharon_.

When she hits the enter key and looks at the result, three things happen:

a) she kicks herself for not realizing this sooner.

b) she nearly falls out of her chair, and

c) Julia curses loudly, most of it directed at Raymond even as he's probably trying to get Marilyn Monroe's knickers off. Scratch that. He _is_.

 _That bloody, cheeky fuck_.

—

Sharon.

Old Testament Hebrew name meaning "plain"

Refers to fertile land in Israel.

Also means _rose_ , as in "…the Rose of Sharon."

"Sharon," Julia breathes out, hands over her racing heart. "Sharon… the girl in roses. Her name is Sharon."

The girl Raymond leaves behind. Her name is Sharon.

—

Julia strings the name of the girl in the roses together, if her theory is true – if Raymond's rambling from beyond the grave holds any significance at all.

She almost hears Raymond's voice again, _Jules, I'm hurt._ It's jovial and merry.

Julia glares at the screen as if his face might appear since he appears everywhere else and the fact that she reiterates that she's probably functionally mad – insane yet sane enough to pass for being in her right mind.

"Fuck your hurt," she curses under her breath and taps the name **Sharon Collins** into the search box. Those are common names. There are seven billion in this world and a chunk of them use the name _Sharon_. Loads of people also use the last name Collins. Julia kisses a boy with the last name Collins in school one year. His first name draws a blank. But that's just it. Many people bump and intersect with each other bearing that last name. It could be nothing. Something inconsequential.

Except that enter key proves Julia wrong. Oh, God. She's so, so wrong.

—

Sharon Collins.

Julia scans the screen quickly. She doesn't need to know the details, only the bare minimum. Sharon Collins is just bones, a skeleton with no muscle, nerves, tendons or even veins. All she needs is the bare outline, the shell. She will go wherever she has to in order to find the shadings, get the details. For now, she just needs the bare basics.

She flips over the first page, heavy with writing and notes to a fresh page.

 **SHARON COLLINS** , Julia writes at the top with double underline and in quotes adds: _Girl in Roses_.

"Okay, Sharon," Julia says, quietly with a furrowed brow and concentrated gaze. "Who are you? Are you my son's sister?"

She's sucked into the sound of her pen scratching against paper and the sound of her own keystrokes all over again.

—

\- multiple marriages

\- multiple arrests

\- been spokesperson – Jabot Cosmetics (side note: moisturizer is magical)

\- been CEO of Newman Enterprises

\- four children, 1 deceased

\- owned coffee establishment – Crimson Lights

\- birthdate shows she's **older** than Travis

Julia blinks at the quick biography of Sharon. New information, old information and things in between. Any information is good information. Sharon has been Sharon Newman. She's been Sharon Abbott, nearly Sharon McCall. Now, she's Sharon McAvoy.

"Sharon McAvoy… née Collins…" So, Collins is her maiden name. Okay.

There are the last bits of information that Julia doesn't want to see, but the last ones that put the whole shell of what encompasses Sharon. She can't step back and out of herself anymore. This woman is shaping up to be Raymond's daughter, Travis' older half-sister and in relation to her, at one point, a stepdaughter.

—

Here are the pieces that click into place as Julia steps back from her writing. From her notes and then flip back to when her theory is just that – a theory.

Sharon is born in Madison, Wisconsin.

She's well known sufferer of bipolar disorder, diagnosed a few years ago.

She resides in – and this one might as well strike Julia like a speeding train, sparking from the friction of the metal coming off the tracks – Genoa City, since adolescence. The same _Genoa City, Wisconsin_ Travis will be heading to because her boy is spontaneous like that and purchases a bar.

When she clicks on the images section to get attach a face to the name, Julia doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. She doesn't know whether to scream or be quiet.

Sharon – this rose, this woman who goes from stranger to relative in a matter of hours in a quiet storm – is a dead ringer for her.

Sharon is a dead ringer of Adelaide. Addie. _Her grandmother._

Julia numbly puts the pen on her pad, closes the lid of her MacBook Air and gazes at the pink scar on her palm. It's taken on another meaning. It's about history now. Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, George Santayana says. But does remembering and being doomed by history even matter when life and death are a cycle pushed forward by time?

She glances at the framed photo on her desk of her and Travis. They all go back to England for a family reunion. Between Travis, Lana's five children (Dmitri, Sophie, Rebecca, Alexander and Nellie) and Nadia's three (triplets: Laurel, Elliot, and Lola), it elates her parents to see all nine of their grandchildren together. It's nice to feel normal being with her sisters. Julia and Lana getting to snipe at each other while Nadia is ever the peacemaker. It's family. It's the comfort of having others who understand the unseen but always felt ties of family that bind.

"Yulia, we carry many people in the one body," she remembers her mother saying that to her privately. Her mother strokes her face, kisses it and then hums, looking off into the distance. She smiles towards the distant sound of her grandchildren – each with personalities that mesh and clash – all bantering, being themselves as if they are never apart. It causes her mother to laugh. "Sounds of joy," she adds sagely in Russian. "That is good."

We do.

We do carry the past in our present so Julia proposes, as she sits still in her study, that inside of every person are pieces of people who die and still live at the same time. Travis carries pieces of her & pieces of Raymond. Raymond carries the pieces of an unemotional father and a mother who takes her last breaths, gasping for them, while twisting in a tree. Julia, herself, carries pieces of a father she adores but cannot understand anymore and a mother who understands everything – the light and dark sides of life because she experiences both – and anything, yet is happy to learn.

Julia sighs, rubbing her temple.

Travis and Sharon carry parts of each other. They are strangers. Two ships that pass each other in the night. Two ships that pass each other in the same waters of one man.

Travis and Sharon _are_ half-siblings.

—

"Mom?" Travis' voice carries over the phone when he calls. He sounds happy.

She's kind of numb, kind of feeling as if she sleeping through one reality and wakes up in another. Julia smiles, tapping her pen. She's trying to ignore the fact that sunlight has left and she's been sitting in this one chair for nearly two and a half hours.

"Hi," Julia replies, forcing herself to sound normal. Nothing is normal. Is it ever? This life-changing thing is entrusted to her because a fucking ghost mentions roses, uses her curiosity and tenacity against her. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah… Actually, better than alright. The bar. It's mine. I got it!"

Oh. Genoa City.

Sharon. Travis. Raymond.

Sister. Brother. _Father_.

Julia is genuinely happy for him. Travis is never the type of child to stay back and go along the grain. He's always the type to march the beat of whatever noise his drum makes and just live. It makes her proud of him. Extremely.

"I'm so proud of you," she admits, sincerely. "You've always been your own person even when you weren't. I love you for your gentleness. I love that you've made it to where you can make good and bad situations work for you. You have really strong convictions."

"You taught me that, y'know?"

"I'm not perfect," Julia says, rubbing her face, trying to push the congruencies between Addie, Travis and Sharon out of her mind temporarily.

"Nobody is. Not even him. I think I'm ready to read that letter. I wasn't going to but the more it sat there unopened, the more strongly I felt I know what he told me before he took his life. My…dad. He, um, left it for me and I guess, it's time I open it. Try to get some perspective and look past his demons and what he did, and hope that I see the person. I think I have some money left over. Enough to donate a charity that focuses on helping people with mental illness. I could honour his memory that way, right?"

He has a sister. One with bipolar disorder inherited from _Raymond_.

She almost chokes on her own air, trying to pull more and more of it down her windpipe, into her lungs.

"I think he'd like that. He'd also like that you left Wall Street."

"Yeah?"

"Absolutely," Julia chuckles, and it's due to the familiarity of Raymond's quirks, his likes, his dislikes. Wall St. is one of his strong dislikes. Big establishments. The soulless drones that follow it and get sucked in. "He loathed establishments. He always said Corporate America was the devil. He was smart enough to make it there. He just never did. Your father was a free spirit that way. I think he'd be proud that you were brilliant enough to land there even though it went against everything he believed in but he'd be ecstatic you were out."

There's a pause on Travis' end. She hears him breathing deeply.

"I don't want to do this to you but I _need_ to know where he's buried."

Julia nods. She knows the moment she opens this festering can of worms that he'd want to know, and frankly, Travis has that right.

"Don't ever hesitate me to ask me," she says, resolutely. It's another small thing she can get off her already compressed chest. It feels like a broken accordion.

She tells him.

She tells him the name of the cemetery, and the location of where Raymond lies six feet under. Julia never, ever forgets the plot number.

"Thank you."

"Just do me a favour and live your life in Genoa City. _Be happy_."

"Okay," Travis promises, and then questions. "You did get some sleep, right?"

Julia almost wants to laugh at that question – the double entendre it bears so that she lies and tells the truth at the exact same time. Truth and deceit intersect and it can't be any more ironic than this. She suppresses the lump in her throat, faces of Addie, Sharon and Travis lining themselves perfectly in her mind. Tears pool in her eyes.

"Mom, you did _sleep_ , right?" he asks again, more concerned.

"Yes, yes," Julia wipes a tear away, roughly with her free hand. It scares her how flawlessly she can lie especially right now. She's just spent hours telling years of truth that hurt her to the core, only to have this fresh one in her hands. "I just woke up. I've been sleeping for a good while."

She barely resists the urge to hang up and fly out to Madison, Wisconsin but stops herself. It's in her heart, in her head, in her chest – the need to find pieces and colour Sharon Collins in. But only after Travis leaves.

Only after.

* * *

 **VIII.**

" _And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain_

 _Don't carry the world upon your shoulders_

— _Hey Jude, The Beatles_

* * *

Travis,

You're sitting in your crib, awake. Your mother is out doing Mom like things and I'm watching you. I can watch you for hours because I'm afraid when I go, I'll miss something. As I write this, you're staring at your hands. It seems like you've just realized you have them. After walking and talking, you've realized that you have these hands. Fingers. Thumbs. I watch you furrow your little brow and discover what it means to open and close your little hands.

I'm struggling and fighting, kid. If you are reading this, then you are old enough to know what that means and you're old enough to have your mother give you the clarity you will need. When you fight, you have a choice to actually win. But I don't and while I love your hands, I am scared of mine. I am scared of what my hands will do to your beautiful mother – the girl with the sundress, distinct laugh, smile, green eyes that got me hook, line and sinker.

I am terrified of what my hands will do to you. This perfect little being I created with the woman I love. You're one of the most beautiful things I ever made when everything else is so ugly. I am scared to break you. I am scared you will look at me one day and the light behind your eyes will disappear only to try to chase it back your whole life and fail. You were in your high chair as you rebelled and threw your bowl of dry Cheerios on the floor. Your mother groaned. I laughed and so did you, proud of you. If you didn't want Cheerios, you weren't going to have them.

"That's m'boy!" I said, proudly and your mother glared at me. Even then, she smiled.

"Don't encourage him, Raymond."

Then you did it. You can ask your mother. But this is something I will forever take this with me no matter where I go.

You pointed a little finger at me and said your first word: "Dada."

Your mother froze in the middle of picking up the beautiful mess you had made. You laughed and pointed at me said it again. It was a sound that burrowed itself into the deepest parts of my heart and never left me as I write this to you. Even as my mind is a minefield I've been blowing up myself in over and over, your little voice is there.

My heart should be stronger than my head. But I am admitting that it is not.

That is my flaw. We all have those, but mine is heavy and moving. I hear it breathing. I hear it's heartbeat. I feel the slight pressure of its footsteps on the edges of my brain. At its worst, I hear it roaring so loudly I can't hear or see anything else. It's like being tied down with chains and being on a rollercoaster with crazy highs and lows and you want to get off. Then you finally do, you hurl everything – blood, guts, soul and then you do it all over again. This is my adventure, and my burden and yours is different from mine.

My worst nightmare is for our adventures to intersect. I can't hope that you won't have any burdens and face any monsters of your own.

I only hope that you can slay yours. I know you can.

Forgive me for what I am about do. And if you can't, that's okay too.

When your mother is sad, tell her it will be okay. Not that she needs the reassurance, but please, tell her anyway. When she's angry, most of it will be at me but let her know, everything will be okay. I love you. I love your mother. I can say that she's the only woman that ever let me be myself – all of me. I am only sad that I will not be here to be to see the man you will become.

Don't try to take on life's messes on your shoulders.

Live freely, or don't live at all.

You'll always be my beautiful boy,

\- Dad

* * *

 **IX.**

" _The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself."_

– _Elizabeth Gilbert_

* * *

It's the same recurring dream.

Travis has this same exact dream but every beginning is different and the ending is different but the stuff in the middle is more or less the same. It's always the place, the same setting. It makes sense even when nothing in the subconscious mind really is. Travis, for some reason, doesn't have any fear. All he has his an acute awareness that he is falling down this same rabbit hole again.

Last night is the sixty-first.

This is the sixty-second.

—

The only difference is Travis isn't falling through it. It's not a rabbit hole. It's not even an empty prison. It's a New York subway tunnel with the sounds of dripping rainwater from above ground. He sees a door at the end of the tunnel instead of the bright headlights of a speeding commuter train.

He opens the door and finds himself in the last place where he wants to be.

—

The very first time goes something like this:

Travis never quite leaves New York, but he's exhausted and rests for a couple hours at the Hotel Hugo. When he wakes up, he'll check out and try to make it to New Jersey at the very least and just keep driving. Travis will keep driving until coffee doesn't do it anymore.

There's the sightseeing part he wants to do in each state for a least a couple weeks at a time.

Jail. There's no prison guard, no warden. No other inmates.

Just a mental table and a figure hunched over a crossword puzzle. It wears a suit with no jacket, and loosened tie. Travis watches it twirl a number two pencil effortlessly between quick fingers.

"Hmm," it finally speaks. "Twenty-seven across, six letters. Partial or complete darkness. Inseparable companion."

The word pieces itself together in his mind. Six letters.

Partial or complete darkness. Inseparable companion –

"Shadow."

Travis is looking into a mirror, looking into a reflection that it's exactly him but isn't. He's staring at a reflection of a part of him that carry all of his bad parts – the parts he locks away and hopes to never with deal again. Yet his subconscious has other plans.

"It fits, but we knew that, didn't we?" it grins like the Cheshire cat. "I'm yours."

—

There's no name for this entity that haunts his dreams and weaves in and out of them. It's something dark Travis fights with night after night until it's not really a fight anymore. He doesn't find himself scared. The decision between fight or flight doesn't come to mind and even if it does, it doesn't apply.

This brings a whole new meaning to the term _shadow boxing_ and Travis doesn't know whether to be amused, or be mildly disturbed.

—

At the halfway point, it dawns on him.

It takes thirty one times, but he gets it.

Travis stares at this disembodied part of himself through jail bars.

He realizes he can control every aspect. Perhaps even dangle this shadowed part of him over the edge of a cliff and step back and it falls into an abyss. The highest in Seattle with just the perfect altitude would be nice.

It always speaks with indifference, mocking with in its undertone. Travis is taught by his mother to focus on what is heard between the silences, the actions done between moments of inertia.

It walks slowly, runs a hand along the bars, pauses and stops with a pensive look.

"What are you scared of, Travis?"

He shakes his head and almost laughs. He's arguing with himself Inception Style. He can't be scared of this. Hell, he's not even scared of this idea of a straitjacket if he came to it.

"I'm not."

"Yet, here we are," it gestures to the air around it, and Travis sees his own lips curl into a smirk. "You dream me up. You dream up the setting. You set up everything. All of this? A product of that head of yours. Tonight, you've decided to lock me with actual jail bars so what are you scared of?"

"Maybe I felt like locking you away like I should have a long time ago," Travis replies with a loose shrug. "I'm going to wake up, live my life. You'll still be here and it won't mater."

There's emptiness in those blue eyes. His eyes. _Its_ eyes.

Travis feels a slight pull inside, somewhere between his heart and stomach.

 _How the hell did you live before this?_

The short answer is, Travis thinks, _he doesn't_. He has breath, bones, flesh and a brain but looking back, it's Wall Street that breathes and has the heartbeat. Travis is the ghost wearing the expensive suit.

"It's not like you're scared you look within yourself and realize you're not as footloose and fancy free as you thought. But of course, that would just shatter everything for you," the shadow gets a twinkle of amusement in its eyes, as it watches the walls slowly close in, the ceiling slowly descend. It's unfazed. "Erasing me won't help. You know what happens when you keep something caged up for too long…"

"Shut up…"

"…it becomes uncontrollable. Wild. Feral, and in the end, you still lose…"

"I said, shut up!"

"Oh…that's what you're afraid of, isn't it? You're afraid you're going to damage that halo you are brightening beyond repair, you fail." The levity is gone. There's nothing jovial now. Its voice is an echo now, a wind tunnel of sound that Travis resolves not to get sucked into. He's not _this_ anymore. It bounces off the walls, and causes tremors underneath the ground he stands on. "You're scared of the loathing. You're scared it will have nowhere to go and no one to bear it but yourself. Up to your neck is self-loathing and you still haven't found the key. You _don't_ get it."

His heart's racing and he just may puke. He's just too stubborn to show it.

He's got issues. Several of them, Travis concedes.

It's gone, disappeared like a single wisp of smoke, but Travis still feels that damn shadow hovering over him.

When he does wake up, it's with a start that makes Travis realizes what dawns on him. Two things, actually.

Travis wonders if Wall Street messes with his head so badly, he breaks in some quiet way beneath a put-together façade. Secondly, he questions what the hell is there to actually get and if what key is he supposed to search for, if at all?

—

He hears jackhammers even as Travis rubs the sleep out of his eyes and tries to settle between his dreams and his realities.

He gets out of the hotel bed, stretching his limbs and turns his eyes toward the George Washington Bridge. It's a thread that holds New Jersey and New York together even as they are separate. He can still see the Statue of Liberty at a distance as far as his eyes will allow.

A third thought enters Travis' mind, the impressions of its footsteps light in his head. It brings back pictures of suits heading toward pretty skyscrapers, weaving in and out of yellow taxis so fast, a person may blink and another scene is placed front a person's eyes before the brain can catch up.

New Jersey is a great place in its own right, yet it geographically tethers him to New York – he's not quite free from the Big Apple yet – so Travis has got to get out. Now.

—

It's Walt's office this time, Travis realizes looking around. The walls are bare. There are no filing cabinets filled with important documents and a section for his secret porn stash. Yes, the man has one of those. There's no trace of him and his life. There are the high windows and the New York skyline. He tries to apply logic and be rational here.

Of course, he would dream this place up. It's very place he sheds this life. He leaves it beyond and when he gets into his car, he leaves everything New York behind. Travis stops caring about the commodity trade at that very point. The closet is closed. Walt never closes it. It's a quirk he has, like swearing when he's happy, angry, rarely depressed. But the closet never slides shut. He knows it's a superstitious thing. This man's mind is a very scary place and knows not to delve too deeply into it. But he's always here. There is just the signature black leather desk chair with the high back and the desk although the surface is empty, glistening with fresh varnish.

"Aren't you sick of this song and dance we do?"

"That implies we're friends. We aren't," Travis says, sharply and sits down in the opposite chair. "Where the hell is Walt?"

Travis glances at the closed closet. It's never, ever closed.

The shadow – because that's what he's resigned to calling it because means something, and absolutely nothing at the same time to him. Some instance of mental balance – nods, with a smile, leaning back in the desk chair. It's wearing one of the last suits Travis keeps and honestly, keeps.

"Walt…Walt… no," it furrows a brow in mock concentration before it shakes its head and a cool shrug of the shoulder. "I'll take 'doesn't ring a bell, Alex' for eight hundred."

Travis feels his hands grip the armrest of the chair a little harder than intended.

 _You hurl blood, guts and soul and do it all over again._

Blood. Guts. Soul.

He makes the realization that he could be his father's son, but the only difference is, Travis will not go to sleep and do this a sixty-third time.

Travis laughs, in spite of his irritation. "You're going to keep screwing with me until I find some damn cryptic key, aren't you?"

There's a slow shake of the head. A look of pity and it only makes Travis' angrier. His New York road rage comes back, only nothing's real here. He wants to tear this place in half with his bare hands. He knows any sudden movements and any noise loud enough will make all this retreat into his head. It severs the link between his consciousness and what he knows lingers beneath it.

The closet slides open. That should make everything right in this world although it's not his world. It's not apart of you anymore, he reminds himself even after fibre of his being screams to react. _Be quiet. Stay calm_. There are firecrackers beneath his skin and red on the periphery of his vision.

Walt tumbles out of the closet in a heavy heap and Travis' eyes face is hit with recognition. The metal glints under the fluorescent lights. He sees the gold and garnet stones before he catches a glimpse of the blood spreading out.

"You killed him."

Travis rubs a forming knot in his temple, glaring.

Shadow. It's always there. It never goes away.

It crouches down with a chuckle, pulls out the dagger. Travis hates that he sees it, hates that he knows of its history and it's that another part of him. He trades cutting out one part of himself for another that may be worse. This silver blade is covered in blood even as it's placed on the mahogany desk. The dark red stains the desk and Travis tries to see where the desk and blood separate.

"Yes, I killed Walt," Travis snaps, sarcastically. "Yeah, I did it. You keep saying this," he stands, gestures to the air around him angrily, "is all me. I'm in the driver's seat here and yet I killed Walt. Please tell me how I did that."

"I'm very glad you asked that question," it chuckles, and there's a dark undertone to it. "Because why be a prince when you could be a king? It's not like the four hundred and five people ahead of you are gonna kick the bucket. Nobody gonna be singing _God Save The King_ in your honour."

"This place is empty to me," Travis says, simply and factually. "Wouldn't want to run it and I'll be okay with not ruling odds are slim to none. It's not soul crushing to me."

It strolls over to the drawer, opens it and shakes its head at the contents inside, "Stored lollipops in here and wouldn't share. Kinda shitty of ol' Walt, no? I mean, he grooms you, takes you under his wing and not one lollipop. Think he knew you were biding your time? Oh well," it shrugs flippantly, closes the drawer and taps a rhythm with its fingers on the desk along it until it stops. "C'mon. You know it. I know it. Your old man wanted to die and you wanted power. Maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the dream catching tree."

—

Travis remembers Walt.

He remembers the trust. He remembers the respect and Travis remembers liking the man even with all his flaws, hung-ups and things that would rub Travis the wrong way. He also remembers working his way up and thinking for a fleeting moment he could damn well run this place.

And then, with the searing guilt of an infinite number of suns, remembers what he is about to do the day he leaves (fire or quit – the semantics don't matter). If not for a shift disguised as a childhood moment, the day would have gone something like this: accept Walt's promotion, watch Marshall seethe just get his kicks, only to put the poison of Walt's affair in anyone's ear. It's New York. People listen. More importantly, people talk.

Then he'd sit back and watch it all blow sky high.

—

"Who'd be the most likely of us to get away with murder?" asks his cousin, Dmitri. There are raised eyebrows and glances at the man as if he's gone insane. He lives in Australia – is born there – so his accent is always there. "No, I'm serious. There are nine of us. If one decided to get away with it, who'd actually do it?"

Rebecca – seven years younger than Travis – groans. "This is a serious question?"

"Uh, yeah. When we're done here, you can blather on and on about the reef going to shit and a whole bunch of about ecosystems."

"I'd like it like we did have a conversation about that," pipes up, Elliot, Aunt Nadia's son – Travis' youngest cousin, really smart yet painfully shy. This kid will cure cancer one day. They're born in Toronto.

Nellie – the tomboy of the group, Aunt Lana's daughter – immediately answers, "Not me. I fight too much."

Sophie – Nellie's younger twin – instantly pulls herself out of the running for potential murderer. This cousin of Travis' is content in the kitchen. Wants to go to culinary school. She throws her hands up in surrender. "Nope. I'd do it with food. Too obvious and I love food too much to use it as a weapon."

Lola, the budding actress – Aunt Nadia's daughter – one and Travis' second youngest cousin, plays with a bangle of her wrist. She rolls her eyes. "I agree with Becky. It's stupid and frankly, if I'm going to be in theatre," she smiles, brilliantly, "then a murder charge won't help that. Unless I'm acting then, I can get away with it. Duh."

Alexander just shakes his head. "Nah. Sharks will kill me first when I go surfing."

Laurel – Aunt Nadia's daughter and Lola's older twin, because yeah, twins run in Travis' family – is going through this weird goth phase and it doesn't bother Travis all that much. Or, frankly at all. Maybe it's not a phase and if it isn't, then that's okay too. Travis loves all of his cousins and it's nice to come out here but he's closest to Laurel. They share things in silence, unspoken secrets and they're going through the same kind of struggle. Identity – different types, facets and reasons but still, both of them are figuring it out.

She's quiet, observant and picks at an already chipped fingernail with black nail polish, pulls a lock of black hair behind a double pierced ear and then glances up and looks at him with piercing brown eyes. "You, Travis. You'd kill and be able to get away with it."

Travis glances at her and rears back like she's hit him and doesn't know how to react. She snorts at his reaction, lips pulling into a smile.

"I'm not being offensive. You've just got an innocent looking face. That's all."

—

Travis and Laurel still text each other every other day. Although, not as much.

He's got a life, and so does she.

Still, he kinda envies here for figuring out she's found balance in the realization that she's bisexual with an attraction that leans toward women. Laurel's happy.

Yet here Travis trying to work things out, literally, in his own head.

—

He also remembers the secretary because Walt throws every name at her under the sun. She merely rolls her eyes and walks away. Travis can't remember her name but he does now. _Melinda_. Of course, he'd like to say he doesn't forget her sunny disposition, warm hazel eyes and freckles. She's average height, curvy with her hair somewhere between auburn and brown.

Truthfully, he'd even like to say Melinda sticks out in his mind even as it's occupied with numbers, stocks and the fluctuation of a commodity's value from day to day.

The memory that sticks with Travis the most is this: Melinda's breathy moans as she arches into his touches and the vertical red scratches she leaves on his back.

He also remembers the glint of her wedding ring, but in passing.

—

After Walt "amicably fires" him, Travis is in the elevator when he crosses paths with Melinda one last tine. She wears an orange dress that stops just at her knees. Her hair is up and makeup is light. Gold bangles are on her arms. The elevator mirrors almost feel like they are exposing what is truly there, inside of him.

She carries folders in her arms and stops short but still enters the elevator. There's surprise in her eyes.

"Oh! Travis, hi…" Melinda pushes the button of the floor she's headed, and then turns to look at him, quizzically. "Walt send you to another meeting or something?"

"Nope. He fired me."

"He…what?"

"Yeah. He fired me because I asked him to," Travis explains and Melinda hides a smile because she knows Walt is melting down right about now. He'll be drunk by eleven at least, they both know that. He will miss this office. Hard to just turn everything off like a switch. He does have to make amends to Melinda before leaving and not looking back, ever. "Listen, Melinda," he blurts out, "I'm sorry."

Melinda raises a questioning brow at him with a slight tilt of her head until it dawns on her, and she sighs. She presses the red stop button with her hip since her hands are full.

"Travis, you have nothing to apologize for, if we're going to address the two nights I _chose_ to fall into your bed and have sex with you. I mean," she shrugs, loosely, "we were two consenting adults that…had an attraction and for a moment, and we acted freely on it. You weren't some guy who stalked me any more than I was woman screaming I wasn't going to be ignored," she laughs at the reference, lightly and so does he.

"It wouldn't sit right with me if I didn't…" he trails off. "Just for my own conscience."

Melinda nods, relenting, "Fair enough. For the sake of your conscience, I accept."

She hits the red button again with her hip and the elevator continues until it stops on her floor. "But," she reiterates with a smile that is equally flirtatious and coy, "you've got nothing to be sorry about. I'm an open marriage type of girl," she winks at him with a glint in her eye. She presses a kiss to his lips, once more, managing the load in her arms effortlessly. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

Melinda walks off with her hips swaying and the elevator doors close.

He likes her.

However, Travis is done with New York and sleeping with the married women it.

He's pretty sure he won't be sleeping with married women anymore. Ever. Melinda isn't the first, but she'll be his last.

—

Travis is going to turn around, leave here, and wake up.

Whatever is going with him, he will deal with and what he can't, Travis will swallow the little bit of pride he has left down and just going to therapy. See a shrink to work the several issues he's developed. Parental issues. Image issues. Just issues.

There's no key. There's no significance here anymore. He glares at this entity with his face, his eyes, his hands—what the hell is this? He enters sleep and gets shoved down this hole and every single time. He won't do it a sixty-third time because Travis will climb out and whether he sees a white rabbit that talks, he will wake up and try to figure things out.

He touches the golden knob, ready to turn it and open the door to whatever is out there. It's his reality to create.

If it's a dream, he'll revel in it and if it's a nightmare, Travis will figure that out too.

"I'm not friend or foe, not even an ally. I'm nothing, really," Travis hears his own voice hit in the back, worms itself in his head. There's a familiar tiredness and resignation he hears before. It doesn't mock him, this time. It sounds weighted. It continues but he doesn't turn. Travis is so close and all he has to do is move. Wake up. Move.

Travis sighs, and turns around to find his grandmother instead. He sees her at Walt's desk instead, but it's not her as she is in the present. It's as she is in the past. He knows because of the weathered, sepia tinted photos. Yet all of the present memories and every word between two languages are still there with all of their meanings understood by just them.

Her chestnut brown hair is short and curly, and she's as beautiful in his dream as she is when Travis is awake and seeing her in person.

A wedding ring glints on her finger, an elaborate one of diamonds and emeralds.

She glances down with a soft sigh, wearing a peach coloured dress that makes her cheeks rosy. Travis sees the furrow in her brow and the frown in her mouth.

"Grandmother…" is that tumbles out of his mouth.

Then he hears her voice, still soft – English with the Russian accent, an even blend.

When he sees those green eyes, he expects them to be angry, even accusatory. Instead, they're glittering, filled with sadness and makes Travis feels considerably worse. She stands and walks toward him and extends a hand toward him.

"Come. I think it is time."

"Yeah," Travis nods, and takes her hand. It's soft as velvet and comforting as the suffer animal a child carries around for security. He fondly remembers his – a stuffed grey wolf with white paws. It's collecting dust in the attic but he remembers Wolfie and Travis smiles, fondly. "I know."

—

"Where are we?"

"Home. My home."

Travis feels blades of glass prickling his back, the cool night air weaving itself between his toes. He has nowhere to look but up. When he stares up, there are so many stars and go for miles against a sky that looks black.

He pulls himself up and rests himself on his elbows to see his grandmother sit across him. Her dress plumes around like a cloud and she pulls her legs under her.

"This field is my childhood sanctuary. The silence is my favourite."

Travis can understand it. He hears about this field so much in their conversations his head must piece it together somehow. Either way, it's quiet. Peaceful.

"I understand why."

"Yes," his grandmother says softly and then turns serious. "But I don't understand why you have lied about your happiness. You lied to me and what breaks my heart is you have lied to yourself," she sighs, wind ruffling her hair lightly.

"I don't know. At the time, I thought I was happy. I had a job I did every day. I woke up, went to work, sometimes slept and then did it again. I had money and I was happy to know that I earned it…"

A light mirth filled chuckle escapes Grandmother's mouth. "You _are_ your mother's son…"

He continues on. He's physically asleep while subconsciously rambling in a Russian field in the middle of nowhere with his grandmother. "You said it. If I find my home, I find everything. Now, there's some key I have to find. I realized that Wall Street wasn't it when I was going to ruin another person's life," Travis confesses, looking his grandmother in the eye. He means it. He truly means this. "I was going to cut this man off at the knees and you know what scares me? I would have slept just fine. Seems trivial now."

There's a pensive look on her face. "I see," and then she touches his face, smiling gently. "You have said it, Travis. Your problem, the fight you are fighting with yourself, is because you are scared."

"Then I don't know," he sighs, throwing up a hand, realizing he thinks about this existential crisis from every angle and still, there's nothing. "What do I do? How do I find this…key?"

"That's it!" her grandmother exclaims, joyfully in Russian. It's something that irritates him, stuns him, and kind of makes him laugh. He could be laughing because he's annoyed and can't react any other way. Perhaps, his brain says laughter because at its basic level, it's contagious.

Really, he's just confused. Travis never has confusion with her. Then again, are dreams even supposed to make sense when it's a result of the mental soup sloshing in his head? It's like alphabet soup with letters that aren't of any alphabet.

"I'm confused, now."

"Travis, you've cut your left arm thinking that you can function with the right. I told you. Virtues without flaws," she explains, taking his hand and enclosing it with her smaller one. "You are a man who leads with his heart and follows with his head. Your problem is that you have a left a life behind and think you can separate it from yourself. The reality is you cannot."

It quietly dawns on him. Travis looks at his grandmother and then around her, around him. There are a million blades of grass on this field and the one he's absentmindedly pulled up – whether rooted in the ground, and between his fingers, is part of the natural grand picture.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You know you can."

"That's the key, isn't it? All these parts of me just have to co-exist."

Grandmother nods, eyes twinkling like the stars above them and looks up with a bright grin that takes her whole face. "Look up," she directs, and still breathless at the expanse. It _is_ beautiful, he realizes, goes on for miles and leaves Travis with this small yet powerful desire to hop on a plane to Moscow one day. "Too much darkness brings shadows and too much light is blinding. But together in balance, they create wonderful things."

Balance.

She stands, pulling him up, and kisses his cheek. "Home is wherever you make it. You understand and I must go. _You_ must wake up. Wake up, Travis."

His grandmother runs across the field, light fabric of her dress that trails behind her like wings until she's gone.

Then Travis wakes up. _Truly_.

—

Seattle isn't quite awake but he is.

He wakes up for the second time in two months and feel the rabbit hole seal itself in his head and never re-open again. At least, for now.

* * *

 **X.**

" _At the end of the day, it isn't where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I'm going and never have been before."_

— _Warsan Shire_

* * *

"Is this how it's going to be?" Julia asks, in exasperation while she hooks on the lacy bra he takes off her body the night before.

Last night she has another haze of insanity that engulfs her like a fog. There's an unseen force – something that drives Julia to take her carpet over to Matthew's apartment and she's banging on the door like a madwoman. It's all hazy to her but the sex is very real and something she realizes they both need. It's something primal, something instinctual and then when it's over and Julia lays awake in Matthew's arms until daybreak.

"Is this how what's going to be?" he throws back with a sigh, still in bed, covers bunched at his legs.

"Us having sex only for things to get awkward."

"No. Nobody being awkward here," he laughs, shaking his head, as Julia feels the heat of Matthew's gaze. He's watching every quick move she makes: the way she pulls her on her jeans, and she pulls on one dark heeled bootie. Then the other. "You're being angry. I'm being a realist."

Julia rounds on him, eyes flashing. Yes, she's angry. Furious. She's furious with the kind of type of ferocious force that drives a lioness to protect her cub.

"I don't need your realism here. Not when it comes to _my_ son. I absolutely will not tell him this a couple days before he leaves here."

"I think you _do_ need realism," Matthew argues, his face hard, leaning against his headboard. "Because that's just it. _You_ called me."

Julia lowers her gaze and folds her arms, with a shake of her head.

"That was a mistake. One of epic, stupid…" she trails off, with a shuddering sigh in her chest. "Look. Travis is home. He's figuring who he is right now, and he's happy. I spent hours unravelling years and years of pain to tell him about his father. He is still processing that. I'm not going to destroy that by adding this," she says, more softly to herself than him. "I can't unless I'm one hundred percent sure. If I go to Madison and somehow find Sharon's mother only to leave with the realization that she isn't his sister, I've rocked his world for nothing and if she is, I have to be delicate with it. He's not some client that will pay me for my services. He's my child. Of course, he's not a child but I'm always going to see him as my little boy," she continues, finding herself being lowered onto his bed by gravity. She wants to leave yet another force makes her stay. Julia stares into his eyes, and asks softly. "Why are so invested in this?"

Matthew tears his gaze away from her and locked his jaw, looking as if wounds of his own burst open. He stares at the palm of a hand, wry smile on his face.

"I'm invested because," he looks up at her again, meeting her line of vision, perfectly with something like regret and slightest anger in his eyes. She knows him well enough to see the anger. The regret is foreign to her, an aspect of his personality revealed to her, "I…have a daughter. Lani. I never thought of having kids because I didn't think I _was_ dad material. I had my job and that's what I was dedicated to. After being on the other side of the law for so long, I decided to change. I was stabbed and nearly died. Seeing the tears streaming down my father's face – a man who never cried – I made a decision."

Ah, it clicks in her mind. That's why he's staunchly by the book.

Julia listens intently, as he continues on. "But you know," he shrugs, "Lani's mother was a girl I wasn't even dating. We just…messed around a few times and when she turned up pregnant, she swore up and down, the baby was another man's. I got a message one day from a woman on FacePlace one day. You know me, I hate the shit out of social media but that day, my gut told me go on there. This woman started off by saying I didn't know her but she knew me because this was the name of her mother. She told her birthdate when I had lived around the time she was conceived. Her mother was dead now and had confessed to her that the man who'd raised her wasn't her father," Julia watches Matthew's Adam apple bob up and down in his throat. "I did the math and it all lined up. I looked at the picture she sent, and there was no doubt…she was mine. She had the strongest resemblance to my mother. So, you see, I know a little bit about the impact of finding family you never knew you had," he smiles, softly, and Julia sees an expression of quiet joy in his face. "We talk almost every day. She has the same humour. What shocks me is she's a woman who's at the police academy. Wants to join the LAPD."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Julia can hear the barely there break in his voice. There's pride in it. "I didn't know but she's following in my footsteps. You know, uh, she…made me promise to come to her graduation and said that she wanted to legally take my last name. I'm already so proud of her but I have these new feelings of fear for her even though she knows the risk of the job and still, wants to follow through. I love her already. It's weird and feels right. A part of me is resentful of the time we lost and I can't get that time back."

"It's wonderful a relationship is being built between the two of you. I mean it," Julia genuinely says, and her eyes mist over with unshed tears. She sniffles. "I understand now but still, I can't do it to Travis. My son has a habit of preferring to live inside his head, disguises how he's feeling and suffers in silence. It's a rather nasty thing he inherited from me. The way he's looking at the world right now and discovering it, is a beautiful sight to watch. I… I want him to bask in it."

"So," Matthew deduces and somewhere between his story and her listening, their hands find each other. Her fingers curl themselves over the top of his hand, her palm warm against his. He looks resigned, "you're going to let your son build a new life in a town where he and Sharon can cross paths for the most minute reasons? Where he's a stone's throw away from his half-sister?"

"Yes," she replies, honestly, staring in the eye.

"Can you live with that?"

Julia shrugs, "I'm going to have to, for now. Please just don't say anything when you meet him – because you will – and trust me."

A deep laugh escapes his throat and he kisses her. It's not a deep one. It's the kind of kiss a girl gets on a first date – sweet yet memorable. She returns it and they part.

"I guess, I have to. I…just know something about lost time so just do it quickly."

Julia merely grins, kisses Matthew's cheek in thanks and leaves.

—

The next few days in Seattle means Travis is getting to know what's new and remembering what's old.

He helps transform the storage room from a room free years of things. He helps her give this room the chance breathe again with newly painted lilac walls, decorated not quite completely and a new black baby grand piano. Travis is stunned when his mother sits at its bench and her fingers press ivory keys to make a song vaguely familiar to his ears come out.

Only after the sound of the last key reverberates in the room as if sound waves bouncing off the walls does Travis realize what song it is.

It's _Hey Jude_ and it makes Travis feel weirdly close to his dad in that brief moment.

—

He also spends time with his mother over several days in between her work and his exploring. They do make time for that hike in Puget Sound. Now as his time home winds down, Travis is torn between wanting to stay just a little longer and itching to head toward Genoa City. He even gets to watch his mother work up close and it's fascinating. Her mind is like a globe to him, truth as the sun and centre and it spins on no axis as her thought processes jump from island to island.

In that time, Travis meets his mom's partner. They're working on some murder case. Delgado is his name or something. There's an easy rapport between them. She shoves him lightly, with a roll of her eyes. He removes the pen behind her ear with ease and scribbles something. She lightly touches his forearm absentmindly as he writes and directs her attention. They bounce theories back and forth.

Delgado sighs, hands on his hip with furrowed brow.

"…but that doesn't make any sense. The husband has an airtight alibi and we have video footage our tech guys say isn't doctored and genuine that places him where he said he was."

"Bloody hell…" a sigh, rub of the temple. "That's just it. The timeline is too clean. She died of ethylene glycol poisoning – antifreeze. You use that for your car, yeah? It wasn't done swiftly either. We know that it wasn't done in one foul swoop. Over time, so it looked like Anna had died of illness. The question is, who would have access to ethylene glycol?"

"Well, it's kept in the house. But sometimes, mechanics carry it."

A pensive slow nod, and a tap to the chest, "Think you can get me a list of all the auto shop within a sizeable radius from the Caldwell home?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'll uh, e-mail them."

Travis notices something in the gaze that passes between them. But his mom says thank you a smile barely hidden and Delgado makes a move to go.

"Travis. Nice meeting you."

He takes the outstretched hand in his and it's a strong handshake between two guys that understand each other. Not on any deep level but a still formed understanding of trepidation and seeing that there's something changed. Something's shifted and it's more than his mom getting a very noticeable haircut. She's the same person yet freer, lighter. She blushes – which is extremely rare – and Travis hears her laugh more.

"Likewise," he replies, with a slight nod and finally, the cop walks out.

When the door clicks shut, Travis looks at his mother with a knowing glance and she catches and responds to with a confused look on her face.

"What? Why are you staring at me like that?"

"You know why."

She looks away, focusing on straightening folders full of evidence and leads.

"Well," she replies, primly with a sigh. "I know my haircut is drastic but I've had long hair my whole life. Short hair, easy management," she adds, combing a hand through her short hair with a silly flourish. It barely touches her shoulders but it does look good. Suits her.

Travis can't help but let a teasing smile rest on his lips and laughs, to himself.

"So, we're not going to address the flirtatious vibe I picked up between you two."

Her jaw drops and she smacks him on the arm, a pink blush on her cheeks, "No, because we are not! Because there was no…vibe as you eloquently put it."

"Mom…I think you protest too much," he shrugs, with a cool air safe in the fact that he's right. "You _did_ raise me not to lie. I'm just putting that out there."

She sighs, heavily "You raise a child, put a roof over his head and he grows up to tease you about your love life…or lack thereof," his mother clicks her tongue in playful sadness. "Nine months of morning sickness and eleven hours of painful labour and this is what is coming to."

"You think I forgave you for that present you left me?" Travis defends, with a playful smirk on his face. "You don't leave your son a box of condoms and pamphlets filled with every graphic details of every STD and STI under the sun."

"I didn't want to become a grandmother. Sue me! I love you too much and everything, I mean, _everything_ I have ever done and will do, is to protect you."

Travis knows that. Or else, his father would still be a mystery to him. He's piecing things together at his own pace and still learning still about Raymond Dean Collins. No one person has just one facet. "I know you love me, and I love you. That's why if he hurts you, he'll answer to me."

"Ever protective, this boy of mine…" she gazes at him, speaking wistfully as a chuckle escapes her, her green eyes bright. It reminds Travis of his grandmother and the fading recollection of a dream set in a Russian meadow. It flashes before his eyes and as if someone has snapped their fingers, it's gone. Maybe it's better that way. "Come here and hug your mother before I don't get to do it for much longer."

Travis hugs his mother long enough for a _see you later_ , because it will never, ever goodbye. Never with her.

—

As per the status quo in Seattle, Travis watches the city become awash in a downpour of big fat drops of rain under the roof of a little coffee shop. The individual drops merge and the road to be slick and glistening. He hears the distant squeaking of windshield wipers as patrons come and go. Inside, Travis starts to observe people to see the landscape of his hometown even if it is just one coffee shop of many. An older gentlemen with snow white lets his glasses fall to the bridge of his nose as the pages of The Seattle Times rustle in his hands. His grey eyes keenly follow the words written on them.

A young mother with a little redheaded girl stands on the counter as she pleads with her mother for a cookie. Her face lights up when the barista give it her for free. A teenager with pierced eyebrow pops her bubble of gum as her fingers tap on the screen of her phone, even in her lazy sitting position. A couple laughs, holds up across the table – two women of Hispanic descent because their conversation is entirely of Spanish. Travis understands enough to know it's of sweet nothings and well, they're happy.

The rain continues as Travis stares out of the big window. The drops are fat and merge to fall like sheets, streaking the window until the world out there is blurry. He can't quite see the Space Needle stand over this place he calls home, but it's better than the Statue of Liberty. He takes another careful pull of his coffee, allowing his grandmother's simple three-worded question roll around in his head.

 _Are you happy, Travis?_

There is no definite answer to that question. There's no true path.

He still wants to follow whatever that path with a point A to point B, with a point C and even D here or there involved. All he has is his integrity and Travis will be able to sleep at night re-discovering this wonderful thing called agency.

—

The journey is only the beginning and Travis can't wait.

For now, Travis will enjoy his coffee and the status quo of a downpour outside.

—

 _fin._

 **Author's Note:** I don't know how this happened and I didn't plan this at all. I just put pen to paper to keyboard and just let things unfold as they did. In this end, this is what came out. We don't know much about Travis aside from a bar owner who ran away from a Wall Street life. I loved this character right away and wanted to fill in the blanks of Travis' life before GC and how he ended up there thrown in with things that are a product of my imagination.

Forgive any typos. I've edited it the best I could, but forgive any mistakes anyway. I did my best with characterization and whatever backstory I could to understand the character's line of thinking and why he is the way he is.

Any and all feedback would be appreciated. Thank you for making it to the end.

Depending on a serious of factors, there *might* be a companion piece. Keyword is might.

REVIEW!

-Erika


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